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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26450593">might we be stardust stories</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryanreynolds/pseuds/ryanreynolds'>ryanreynolds</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Direction (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A little, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Arranged Marriage, Budding Love, Dialogue Heavy, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Made up lore, Pining, Political Marriage, Slow Burn, Vampire Harry, Vampires, Werewolf Louis Tomlinson, Werewolves, because they learn how to communicate pretty fast, very little i promise</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:42:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26450593</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryanreynolds/pseuds/ryanreynolds</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"<i>It was easier being at war.</i>"</p><p>In which werewolves and vampires have been fighting each other for a century, and Harry and Louis' marriage is what's gonna bring peace to the realm. Hopefully.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>290</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>1D Mythical Fic Fest</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>might we be stardust stories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the 1D Mythical Fic Fest and the prompt #34<br/>"Person A is a werewolf and Person B is a vampire. They are attracted to each other but they must learn to deal with the different dynamics of vampire and werewolf clans."</p><p>It's not necessarily the dynamics you'd expect, but I hope it still shines through the troubles they go through adapting to each other and their different ways of living :D</p><p>There's also a <a>fic post</a> here if you want to reblog it - or just appreciate the gifs my wonderful friend, <a href="https://curlyhairedprince.tumblr.com/">Petra</a>, made for it!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was easier, he thought to himself, to be at war.</p><p>Fighting, bleeding, dying, all that had been easier than this pressing silence and discomfort that the tentative peace treaty had brought with it. It wasn’t even that probable that the peace would hold more than a few decades, if it even lasted till the end of the year.</p><p>There was, after all, still six moons turn until they would celebrate the new year, a better year, a prosperous year in peacetime.</p><p>The war that had ended just a fortnight ago, had lasted generations. Sparked by an elopement the ruling families between it had now been ended by a marriage between the same families. If it wasn’t his life, his reality, he would think it a great joke. So many lives lost for things to end up where they started.</p><p>Well, not exactly where they started, he thought - maybe a tad bit bitterly. After all, the two who eloped did so out of love.</p><p>Here, in this marriage him and the new vampire lord between, there was little love lost. His mother, the morn of the wedding, had told him that there had been worse beginnings for marriage, and he supposed she was right. Back when arranged marriages were custom, especially in his lands, matches were made on the prospect of gaining more territory, gaining more power. A match made to bring peace wasn’t a bad start. And bringing peace should be enough. What mattered love when his people were safe? When the children born didn’t have to see their parents, older siblings, go off to war, didn’t have to fear for the day they were old enough to train for their journey to the front lines? He didn’t need a marriage with love and happiness as long as children weren’t made orphans off.</p><p>He was also in the precarious situation that his people were the ones that needed this peace treaty the most. The vampires weren’t inherently better, stronger, deadlier, but their vampire lord had been superior in his tactical genius, and every battle from the day he’d taken up the mantle of lordship had been a suicide run for his people. He needed to keep the peace by making the lord happy. Even if it came at the expense of his own happiness. He’d been made the vampire lord’s viscount, the apparent spare should anything happen to the vampire lord himself. He didn’t actually think they would ever make him a lord, but he was still granted the title.</p><p>And so far, it hadn’t required anything from him at all, seemingly. He’d been installed in his room - which really had been more of its own house in and of itself - on the eve of their wedding, his groom smiling at him as he bid him goodnight with a kiss to the back of his hand. The green of his eyes had left Louis breathless for a bit, and he had thanked whatever spirits may exist for it not being a full moon.</p><p>Not that the lord and the vampire coven in power would have allowed the wedding to have been on a full moon. In their tactical brilliance, they had avoided fighting against him and his people on a full moon. On those nights, it was like they had vanished from the face of the earth. At least in the beginning. After a few years, going out to fight on the full moon had been the least of their concerns. While the full moon gave them power on the battlefield, it also gave them more power to heal. And healing was of the essence as the vampires very rarely <i>killed</i>, rather than just leave his people wounded so they were unable to fight back.</p><p>Lord Styles hadn’t been ruthless, was the thing. He hadn’t torn through their towns. He hadn’t ordered Louis’ people killed. But war was war, and severely wounding to the point they couldn’t fight back had proven the superior tactic. </p><p>Being a pack meant that everyone had a connection to each other, some stronger, some weaker, but the connection was there. And having that connection pulsating in agony, in distress, was much more effective than a connection disappearing. The latter felt like something from your soul had been torn out in a split second, leaving you incomplete. The former felt like a piece of your soul screaming for help, writhing in pain. Your pack was in pain, you were in pain.</p><p>How the lord had come to realise this was beyond Louis. The war between their two races had gone on for almost a century, with both forces seemingly equal in power. All it had taken was a few years from the time lord Styles took over until they’d travelled under amnesty to negotiate for peace. He’d seemed to know their secrets from the second he’d begun planning the battle strategies.</p><p>They’d stood in the throne room, him and his family, their highest ranking and strongest wolves behind them, and he remembered thinking of how small and insignificant one being was compared to the size of just this one room. How splendid and spectacular it was. He hadn’t thought it beautiful as such, its extravagance so far beyond what he was used to, but it was beautiful. Everything had been carved in the whitest stone, the windows and their mosaic the only thing lending colour to the room. Even the vegetation seemed white, silvery, almost as if it’d been painted.</p><p>The negotiations had been humiliating for him, for his family, on all possible accounts. They’d once been prideful, the head family of the leader pack, with the biggest territory, forced to kneel to the stonelike vampire lord. The only thing about him that had seemed <i>alive</i> was the wind moving his hair. Even his green eyes, as brilliant and shining as they were, had seemed cold, dead. His smile when Louis’ mother had proposed peace had been, not arrogant, but knowing. It had seemed flat, like he’d known this day would come. Had been sitting on his throne for years, just waiting for them to come to him. Not to gloat over them, but to show them how reality was.</p><p>It had been humiliating in the sense that despite their power, <i>he</i> had stripped them of it all, seemingly without having had to lift a finger.</p><p>Louis knew that wasn’t true, knew that lord Styles - just like he - had been busy in planning for battles, had been busy planning for funerals - or whatever their equivalent of that ceremony was, and while the vampires’ victory had come, it hadn’t been without damages. It hadn’t come easy, despite the swiftness of it in the grand scheme of things.</p><p>For Louis himself, though, the worst had come the second lord Styles’ eyes had shifted to him after Louis’ mother’s proposal and subsequent pleas wrapped in courtesies.</p><p>The smile when he was handed a victory may not have been arrogant, but the smile when his eyes connected with the person he’d deem his prize had most certainly been gloating.</p><p>“I’ll accept your peace offering,” he’d said, and through the pack bonds, Louis was almost brought to the floor at the feeling of relief that flowed through it. Like the heavens had been lifted from his shoulders like he was Atlas himself, and he hadn’t even known he was carrying the weight in the first place. Even with weak knees, eyes locked with the vampire’s green, he had a feeling he might flow away if he wasn’t careful.</p><p>“Thank you, my lo-”, his mother had begun, only to be cut off by a simple raised finger from the lord himself.</p><p>“I’ll accept your peace offering,” he reiterated, “in the form of your son.”</p><p>It seemed as if a hush went through the crowd, even the vampires though they didn’t move an inch - ever the beautiful stone statues. This room hadn’t needed any artificial statues like the entry gardens had been filled with: in this room, the statues had come alive. Though he could feel the anxiety from his pack flow through him, it felt like his insides were imitating the stone-like vampires in front of him. The emotions coursed through him, unnoticed by him.</p><p>“My lord,” his mother began again, and again a raised finger silenced her.</p><p>Green eyes bore into his own when the lord began to talk once more, “as my spouse and viscount, he will be cared for and kept safe. It is on his shoulders, after all, this peace will rely. A peace that will only help both our peoples, do you not agree?”</p><p>“Well, yes, my lord,” his mother tentatively agreed, and out of the corner of his eyes, Louis could see her turn to him.</p><p>He felt as if the lord’s eyes were Medusa’s own and he was slowly turning to stone.</p><p>“Splendid,” the lord said, his smile widening, though it stayed ever cold, “I do love when people agree with me so easily. You mustn’t worry, my dear chief Tomlinson, your son will be only given the best of the best.”</p><p>It had gone so quickly, from being at war but <i>free</i> to being at peace and in a cage. A gilded cage, of course, with only the best of the best at his disposal, as was promised, and freedom to walk wherever he wished on his lord husband’s grounds, but a cage nonetheless. </p><p>From the moment the lord’s terms for peace had been put on the table, very little time had been needed before his mother asked for a room where she could talk with her son alone. The lord has smiled amicably, as if he found them as amusing as children playing at being kings and queens.</p><p>“You can discuss in a room to the side, or you can do it here. I can’t allow you to be escorted so far away that we won’t be able to hear every whisper you exchange.”</p><p>His mother had seemed to weigh the options of whether scratching the lord to pieces would be worth it, but in the end, she turned to Louis, eyes big.</p><p>“Are you alright?”</p><p>Underneath that, he could hear all the unsaid questions that barreled through their connection. </p><p>
  <i>Is this something you can do. Say the word and we’ll turn around. The packs will fight for their prince.</i>
</p><p>But Louis could still feel Lottie’s pain from the wound in her leg, a wound that while it <i>would</i> heal might cause her to walk wrong for the rest of her life. The bone having been too healed when their healer finally found her in the latest battlefield.</p><p>So he nodded at his mother.</p><p>“Yes, I’m alright.”</p><p>He’d never been the best at using their connection before, but he prayed she was able to feel everything he wanted to convey.</p><p>
  <i>I’ll be alright. Take care of the young ones. Keep the peace. I love you.</i>
</p><p>It had taken an hour for a century long fight to come at a rest, and for Louis’ freedom to be taken away.</p><p>He supposes it was not the worst that could happen.</p><p>Many lives have been taken in less than that. And Louis would still be alive.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>***</b>
  </p>
</div>From the day he’d gotten here, he had seen his lord husband maybe five times. Never for long, and he’d always been courteous if not open. Louis was always greeted with a kiss to his cheek or the back of his hand, a smile, and a ‘dear husband’.<p>He didn’t think he’d ever heard lord Styles say his name.</p><p>Normally, as well as a ‘normally’ could be constructed on the basis of a fortnight, he wouldn’t fidget over not knowing when he would see his husband. Normally, he would rarely think of him. Most of his time were spent walking the grounds, among the trees at the furthest edges of his allowed territory, or spent reading, writing, painting. Not that he had many a skills in either of the latter two, but he supposed that he had all the rest of his life - as long or short as it may be - to learn. He saw very few vampires that weren’t the maids coming to him with his daily meals, and if it wasn’t because he stayed away from the central parts of the castle at all times, he could almost make himself believe he was alone.</p><p>But now. Right now he could do naught but sit at the window sill, staring into the distance, eyes unseeing, waiting for his husband to turn up.</p><p>As a werewolf, he didn’t really need food three times a day, especially not of the quantity that he’d been served here. He could, with the amount of food he’d been eating these past few weeks, easily wait another week until he needed food again. He’d be weak by then, but not deadly so.</p><p>The maids came to clean his bed, open his windows, serve him breakfast at the same time as ever. They never did much but smile at him, courtesy in a way that didn’t seem like it was for any reason but show, and then leave.</p><p>He supposed it made sense. He hadn’t outright been labeled a prisoner, but he and everyone else knew that was what he was. He may have had a marriage that put him at the top of the vampiric hierarchy, but he’d gotten none of that power.</p><p>As they glided around doing their duties in haste, his eyes didn’t leave the horizon. The forest. The sky.</p><p>The entire castle was as unwelcome as it was impressive in size, in art. He’d been used to tree carved buildings, used to life amongst nature. The grand castle with its man made gardens, its pristine cleanliness, its cold stones. Nothing about this reminded him of home, except for the forest that stretched out into the horizon, beyond the garden. The castle was filled with vampires, but they didn’t dare go here. He oft wondered whether this wing of the castle he had been dealt was for the most honoured guests or indeed for important prisoners. Prisoners they couldn’t afford to treat bad.</p><p>It was so far away from the throne room, from the entrance hall, from the dining room where he knew they held many a banquet - especially back when the lord was looking for a partner in a time when the war had been cold and sluggish. Efforts that obviously hadn’t paid off as the lord had tied himself to Louis.</p><p>He turned around, just as the last maid was moving out the door.</p><p>And for the first time since he was first shown his rooms by his husband, he opened his mouth.</p><p>“Wait.” His voice was hoarse and had vampires not had the hearing they did, the maid would have been out the door, none the wiser of his inquiry.</p><p>As it was, the maid froze in the doorway, turned slowly - way too slowly for a vampire, to look at him. Her smile was stiff, flat.</p><p>“Milord,” she said, curtsied once more, keeping her head tilted downwards, eyes on the floor.</p><p>He studied her for a bit, wondering whether or not she’d hold the same level of respect for him as any of the other high-ranking vampires. Whether or not she’d stand where she was until he gave her any other command, or until she needed to feed to survive.</p><p>As time ticked on, she didn’t move from her sudden, demure stance. A stance he’d never really thought a vampire could hold, exuding with arrogance, superiority.</p><p>“Would you notify my lord husband that I wish to speak to him?”, he asked, partly because he did need to talk to his husband, partly because he was a bit fascinated by just how different the vampiric hierarchy was from pack hierarchy.</p><p>With his people, power differed from pack to pack, wolf to wolf within a certain pack - from the alpha to their chosen seconds, to the regular betas, but never were anyone in actual servitude. He wondered whether or not, the servants here were paid in some way. </p><p>And he wondered whether servants had any authority to ask for the vampire lord himself’s attentions. Even if it was for the lord’s own husband. This lord had never had a partner, mate, spouse before, or at least that’s what their spy intel from the war had told them, so the servants had never encountered this situation before.</p><p>Granted Louis’ informant had told the truth, of course.</p><p>The maid didn’t exactly widen her eyes or gasp, not like he’d secretly hoped she would - it’d be the closest thing to the shenanigans from his youth he’d done since he arrived in his new home, if he’d somehow caused turmoil by asking her to find his husband and bring him to him.</p><p>She did seem surprised though, as well as a stone-faced vampire could look surprised, so he supposed that was something. </p><p>“You wish to speak to the lord?”, she asked as if she, a vampire, had heard wrong.</p><p>“I wish to speak to my husband, yes.”</p><p>She looked up at that, the repetition of the lord as ‘husband’, and this time she did look outwardly surprised. Then she curtsied again, and that damned arrogant smile was back. Like she knew that he knew that the title of ‘husband’ was little more than a formality.</p><p>Without further comments, she curtsied and backed out of the door, closing it on her way out.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>***</b>
  </p>
</div>He didn’t pay much attention to time passing by after the maid left, didn’t think much on whether or not his husband was notified about him wishing for his presence, but he knew that within the coming week, he’ll begin to panic if his husband would not come. Today there wasn’t a pressing issue, but the closer they got to the full moon, the more pressing it was that his husband came to him. He couldn’t very well stay in his room and transform, and he’d convince his husband of that by all means necessary. If he couldn’t convince him on the grounds that as the lord brought Louis’ health at risk if he didn’t get to run under the moonlight in his wolf form, he’d have to try and play to the vampire’s inevitable prejudice of werewolves being uncontrollable and lusting for blood on full moons. Surely then, his lord husband couldn’t ask him to stay within the castle walls. A true lord won’t bring his people in danger.<p>Worst case scenario, if he was forced to go down that route, was that he’d be chained up outside using a silver chain to keep him subdued. It would be painful, it would be infuriating not being able to run, but at least, he would be <i>outside</i>. Outside, directly beneath the moon, was much better than being locked inside the castle.</p><p>There’s another, even worse, worst case scenario that he didn’t even dare think about. Being locked in the castle basement, in a prison cell, without being able to see the moon, properly feel the moon.</p><p>There’s accounts of werewolves going insane, spending the full moon cut off from the moonlight. Surely, <i>surely</i>, the lord Styles couldn’t afford going to war if word gets out that first full moon into their marriage and, more importantly, into the new peace treaty, and the prince Louid has already gone mad.</p><p>This was, of course, granted that word even got back to his people about what happened. He couldn’t be sure that if he truly was mistreated, his family would ever know. They’d be able to feel his death from this distance, probably strong pain as well. But mental strain? A silver chain around his neck? He was not sure.</p><p>“I can feel you panicking from the end of the corridor, Louis.”</p><p>He pointedly did <i>not</i> flinch at the sound of his lord husband’s voice coming from the door. He’d come in unannounced, and Louis’ internal struggles with what would happen to him in a short time must evidently have been too engrossing for him to hear the door opening.</p><p>He didn’t turn around either.</p><p>“My lord husband,” he greeted lord Styles, voice pleasant, “you got my maid’s message?”</p><p>Something ruffled in the background, and Louis looked back to see what it was.</p><p>Lord Styles sitting on the edge of his bed was not something he’d ever envisioned. The marriage was purely political, for the best of both their races, and whenever the lord had visited him before, he’d never ventured further into the room than a few steps.</p><p>The lord and Louis’ bed was a vision he didn’t know how to process. So he decided to ignore it as best as he could.</p><p>“I did,” he seemed amused, or as amused as a statue can look, Louis thought, “she seemed quite uncertain whether she was allowed to ask of me to come here.”</p><p>Louis shrugged. She was uncertain, he was uncertain, but evidently, she had been allowed to ask that of lord Styles, and he’d been allowed to ask that of her.</p><p>“I want you to know,” the lord’s amused face vanished as quickly as they’d arrived, “that you’re not imprisoned here, Louis. I am not, nor is anyone else here, your jailor. You are my husband, the key to lasting peace. You can call on me.”</p><p>Any weight the term ‘husband’ might have held disappeared in the instant lord Styles reminded him that while he had the title of husband, it was only a formality to keep the peace. </p><p>Not that Louis wanted it to hold any weight, necessarily, but it was strange to have such a sacred term as ‘husband’ that was on par with <i>mate</i> be used without any of the underlying intention of using it to signify two souls had been bonded together in love.</p><p>He’d never thought he would be tied to someone for the rest of his life that he didn’t love, much less someone he didn’t care for or even <i>know</i>.</p><p>He nodded, then did a deep nod to show his gratitude.</p><p>“That’s very welcoming of you,” he told his lord husband, sneaking a look out on the forest.”</p><p>A beat passed as he got lost in thought of how to approach the subject.</p><p>“You know you can go to the forest, right?”, lord Styles informed him, “not too far, of course, but you don’t need to ask my permission to go to the edges of it that’s still on my lands.”</p><p>Louis looked at his husband once more before nodding. “No, I know that. It’s not quite that.”</p><p>“It’s not?”, the lord seemed surprised, the same look the maid have gotten. Like, they hadn’t thought about the possibility of Louis being capable of surprising them. As if they’d anticipated his next ten moves and were now realising he’d made another move entirely. “Forgive me, I just thought with your wistful gazing at the woods-”</p><p>“I am not wistfully gazing at the woods!”, he exclaimed affronted. “I’m just thinking.”</p><p>The lord cocked his head. “Well, can you let me in on what you’re thinking? I can’t read minds, you know, and I am working on a schedule.”</p><p><i>Unlike you</i> went unsaid, even if Louis wouldn’t have been offended had his husband voiced it. Because ever since he arrived, he’d worked out a routine for himself, but if he wished to change it up, no one could stop him.</p><p>It had to be different governing the vampire species. Easier in some ways as the vampires didn’t need superficial things such as sleep, harder in other ways because as they didn’t need sleep - there wasn’t a traditional end of a work day. Merely breaks for feeding. And that only once a day, if the intel was right.</p><p>Maybe more if they were really hungry, he supposed.</p><p>“It does have to do with the woods, I guess,” he conceded, “but not in the way you think, or thought.”</p><p>The vampire spread his hands in front of him. “Enlighten me, then.”</p><p>Another beat passed.</p><p>“You know that I’m a werewolf, right?”</p><p>The vampire blinked.</p><p>Surprisingly enough, Louis hadn’t been sure vampires needed to blink or even knew how. He supposed it was somewhat muscle memory, still, even if they didn’t actually need to wetten their eyes. Or maybe they did. Just very rarely.</p><p>“Yes, I do,” the vampire sounded very unsure as if threading through a minefield, “it’s the reason for why we’re in this situation right now. Because you’re a werewolf.”</p><p>Louis nodded. “Yes, yes, I know, that’s not quite what I meant. What I meant is, as your intel through the years must have told you, we werewolves go through changes every month.”</p><p>“On the full moon, yes.”</p><p>“On the full moon,” Louis repeated and nodded, again, “and the thing is, while I can suppress the need to change any other day - like today - I can’t do that during the full moon.”</p><p>The vampire frowned. “Suppress-”</p><p>Louis continued as if he wasn’t trying to interrupt him. Now that he’d gotten momentum and he wasn’t about to slow down, otherwise he might not get the nerve to ask what he needed to ask. He was, despite the peace agreement, on enemy territory still.</p><p>“I need to be able to run in the forest on the full moon. And I’ll subject to whatever rules you set, I just need to be out there.”</p><p>If he needed to get on his knees and <i>beg</i>, he would.</p><p>He might, at first, have thought he could just do with being chained up outside, but now just the thought was making him nervous and his skin felt scratchy. A run in the forest beneath the moon and the stars, that was what he needed.</p><p>A wolf wasn’t meant to be chained up.</p><p>He would do whatever to be able to roam free.</p><p>His husband looked at him for a few moments, as expressionless as he had been under the peace negotiations, any trace of the earlier confusion had been wiped from his features completely. Even his green eyes seemed to be less alive than when he came in.</p><p>“Louis,” and it grated Louis how his husband seemingly had no qualms addressing him with his first name, as if he was a child, while Louis still kept up the more formal ‘Styles’ even in his own mind, “it’s only been a few weeks of peace, wounds are still fresh, grieving isn’t done. My people won’t trust you not to go on a rampage if you’re too close to the house, and the forest is full of my more, let’s say, headstrong people. I can’t protect everyone here if you use your strength against us, and I can’t protect you if you’re too far away.”</p><p>Louis let out a shuddering breath while he forced himself to stay calm, nails boring into his skin - probably drawing blood - to keep himself grounded.</p><p>“How could you have proposed a marriage,” Louis got out through grinded teeth, “to me, if you weren’t ready to take on my wolf as well?”</p><p>Lord Styles held up a hand. “There is a plan that’s ready to be set in motion for when you begin to show signs of the change-”</p><p>“And what does this plan entail? Locking me up like a dog?”</p><p>“No!”, the vampire countered flustered, “no, not at all. You’d be in the gardens, and I know it’s not quite the same as roaming the forest, but-”</p><p>“A garden?”, Louis let out a breathless laugh, “my lord, you cannot claim to be ignorant of our ways because I know your knowledge of my people is extensive. I might be fine in the garden this time, and the next, but my wolf is not a dog. It will suffer, <i>I</i> will suffer, if I don’t get to run under the moon.”</p><p>His husband seemed vaguely uncomfortable now, almost on the border of fidgeting. “There’s limits to what I can do-”</p><p>“Have I not been compliant? Have I not kept to myself, kept the peace, kept from making trouble?”, he pressed. “Have I given any reason for you to suspect that I would attack your people?”</p><p>A sigh.</p><p>“Louis,” he started, then seemed to change his mind about what he wanted to say, “I don’t think you would attack us, even if you wanted to I know that you’re too smart to realise you’re outnumbered.”</p><p>For the first time, Louis felt at a loss with the conversation, like he was running around a labyrinth and he was slowly figuring out that he wasn’t going to be able to find his way out.</p><p>Defeat. The foreboding sense of defeat.</p><p>“But I don’t know your wolf-”</p><p>“My wolf is <i>me</i>,” Louis sneered, “my wolf isn’t going to go off on a murderous spree just because the moon is shining. We’re not two separate entities, we’re one and the same. All that happens on the full moon is that I’m gonna feel <i>free</i>.”</p><p>He was at the point of begging. If the vampire didn’t give in soon, he’d go on his knees and beg, something he’d never thought he as a prince would have to do.</p><p>“You have to understand, Louis,” and the vampire sounded so condescending, so placating, that Louis wanted to scream. The vampire just didn’t understand, couldn’t get the notion through his head that Louis wouldn’t want to do anything but run while transformed. Run as if there were no borders. Howl at the moon and pretend he could hear his family howl back.</p><p>He wanted, longed, for the sense of freedom that came with running through the forest, the trees, the colours, passing by in a blur. The smells, the sounds, the feel of moss under his feet.</p><p><i>Life</i>.</p><p>“If I transformed now, would you trust me under the full moon?”, he hoped he didn’t sound as desperate as he felt, but when it all came to it, he didn’t really care if he did. </p><p>Lord Styles looked startled. “Transform? Here, now?”</p><p>Louis nodded frantically. “Yes, you can put a silver chain on me, have me inhale some wolfsbane, whatever, just let me prove I’m not gonna hurt you-”</p><p>“I’m not hurting you!”, the vampire yelled, and for the first time, Louis looked at him and didn’t see an undead. The vampire’s eyes looked alive, brimming with something Louis couldn’t quite place. He repeated, “I won’t hurt you.”</p><p>Louis felt at the brink of tears, though he couldn’t very well show it.</p><p>“If you don’t allow me to run with the moon, you <i>will</i> hurt me,” he said with as much conviction as possible.</p><p>The lord was fidgeting where he was sitting, looking like he was ready to pace back and forth until he came to a solution to the dilemma in his brain. Louis didn’t think he got like this very often, he didn’t seem the type.</p><p>But, who knows, he might have been like this before every attack. Thinking of how to best hurt Louis’ people without killing, and also without losing any of his own people.</p><p>Finally the vampire nodded resolutely to himself.</p><p>“You said that you could be in the garden this full moon without it hurting you?”</p><p>Louis thought about it again, thought about the consequences that would have, but decided that he’d have to live with them. He nodded.</p><p>“Good,” the lord took a deep breath which, unnecessarily dramatic since he didn’t need to even take a small breath ever, “first full moon, you’ll be in the garden, and I will be there to supervise. If you pose no danger to me at all, not so much as growl at me, I’ll do what I can to make sure you’ll be able to roam the forest the next full moon.”</p><p>He didn’t quite dare move, or even take a breath, for fear that this was all a dream, of some kind, and it would shatter if he moved. That his husband would tell him that no - he’d be locked in the cell instead, the pipedream had been nothing but that. Lapse of judgement. Something, so that his dream was taken away from him.</p><p>“Thank you,” he breathed at last.</p><p>His husband nodded again.</p><p>They didn’t say anything else before his husband departed as quickly and soundlessly as he arrived, but it felt like a boulder had been literally lifted off of each of Louis’ shoulders.</p><p>“Thank you, Harry,” he whispered to himself, almost as if to taste his husband’s name on his lips.</p><p>Saying his name out loud felt weird though, made him feel weird, so he decided not to do it again.</p><p>It was a very pretty name, though. He liked the sound of it, just not how it made him feel.</p>
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    <b>***</b>
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</div>In the coming days, Louis spent more time outdoors, patrolling the garden to the point of nearly turning over every stone. Sometimes, the servants stood at the edges of the garden, close as can be to the main house, in the shade. Silently waiting on him to notice them so he could get his meals. Sometimes they waited there for so long, it seemed they couldn’t stall their other duties any longer and had left his food on one of the stone benches.<p>Other days, he was in the forest, actively pulling himself back from shifting and running, running, running. Running until he came to the edge of the world. He didn’t want to stop when he first began. He could feel his entire body become more and more antsy every day, vibrate with the want to shift and run.</p><p>He’d always had good control, could stay every day out of the shift if he needed to - as he had the last weeks he’d been staying here, but when the full moon came it was like she was trying to take back everything that had been denied her. He didn’t become a mindless monster, he didn’t become a natural wolf either. He simply just could not hold the shift back when the full moon came close enough.</p><p>He didn’t quite know what day it was but judging from how his body felt, the full moon couldn’t be more than a couple days away at best.</p><p>His husband had also started to spend, well, more time with him. In a sense. They still didn’t talk and Louis still didn’t think of him in other terms than as his husband or lord Styles. But every night, he came to his room with something new to pass the time, as he waited for Louis to grow tired.</p><p>These past two days, they’d been playing chess.</p><p>Louis wasn’t quite sure if the chess game was because his husband liked the game or if it was his way of seeing how close Louis was to his shift, most likely to the latter to see how good Louis was at controlling his shift.</p><p>Like a spy, assessing his enemy’s level of skills.</p><p>Even so, Louis had to admit that spending these hours with his husband, more often than not in complete silence while they were mulling over their next moves or just lost in thought, was nice. He didn’t know anyone else, didn’t really know his husband either, and though he’d been content staying by himself - this was nice.</p><p>It didn’t hurt that there were certain times that the stone facade seemed to crack a bit, that sometimes Louis could forget that he was a vampire because he seemed to vibrate <i>life</i>.</p><p>Sometimes, like this night, his husband asked him questions about where he came from. Not questions that, from what he could tell, would have any strategic value. Questions about the life of his people, the traditions, the lands - what made their forests so important to them and so forth.</p><p>“We’re free amongst the trees, especially during a full moon,” he told him, “we’re of the nature, our soul yearns to be part of it. To shift back into our human skin isn’t always easy, sometimes the wolf holds onto us. But if we’re running in the forest, if we’re one with the nature and our wolf, it’s not a problem.”</p><p>“Is that why you asked to go to the forest this full moon?”, Styles asked, head tilted.</p><p>Louis had already told his husband way too much of the limitations his wolf side put on him during the full moon. If the vampires, if his husband, ever turned against him and his people, what he already knew could be detrimental. If Louis told him even more details of it and someone got hurt because of it, he’d never forgive himself.</p><p>He could tell the vicious part of the truth, though. He’d never volunteer the vulnerable information, of just how vulnerable the wolves were if they were disconnected from the moon for a long time.</p><p>“I told you that our conscious is still present when we turn during the full moon,” he opted for instead, “if we’re cut off from the moon for too long, our wolf is gonna take over completely. If we’re cut off from nature, nature will steal what it has been denied. We’d appear nothing more than normal wolves, yet we’d still possess our strength and with no humanity to keep it in check- well, I think you’d be able to figure it out.”</p><p>His husband just nodded, not appearing all too surprised by it.</p><p>Who knew, maybe they’d experimented on this in the past, trying to figure out how they could best attack werewolves, and lord Styles just wanted to hear whether or not Louis would tell him the truth.</p><p>He prayed that wasn’t the case. The thought made him dizzy with nausea and anger.</p><p>“Nature always finds a way,” Styles commented, forcing a lightness back into the conversation.</p><p>Louis looked a bit at the chess board in front of him. He’d lose in 10 moves, maybe more if Harry hadn’t seen all the ways he could win, but Louis wasn’t naive enough to think himself more clever than the vampire.</p><p>“I’m tired,” he said, getting up from the chair, walking towards his bed, already pulling off the shirt he’d worn for the day.</p><p>There wasn’t a reply for a bit, and Louis turned around, the sleeves of his shirt down by his elbows, to look quizzically at his husband. Harry’s face hadn’t exactly changed, but when he noticed Louis’ eyes on him, he blinked and smiled a bit.</p><p>“Of course,” he said gently, getting up and giving Louis a short bow, that was not at all etiquette, seeing as Louis wasn’t equal to him. In theory, yes, but not really, and Harry knew that. “Good night, Louis, I’ll see you tomorrow.”</p><p>He seemed in a hurry to get out, which was unusual, but it could be that he’d heard something that required his attentions. Louis didn’t necessarily care to listen for that, especially not today. It was like there was always a little buzzing around his ears, and it’d been irritating him all day.</p><p>He should have realised what that meant, he really should.</p><p>He woke not three hours later, it felt like, and his entire body was vibrating. Vibrating with excitement, with need. He needed out. Out, out, out.</p><p>Out of his bed.</p><p>Out of his room.</p><p>Out of the house.</p><p>Out of his <i>skin</i>.</p><p>And it couldn’t go fast enough.</p><p>He threw away the duvet, it’d only been pooled around his waist anyway - it had been so hot when he went to sleep despite it being autumn and that should really have been his clue - and ran out of the room, down the hallways.</p><p>There was only minimal lighting, not that he needed much, his eyesight was phenomenal in the dark - and especially near the full moon. He just needed no one to get in his way; not that he felt any particular violent outburst coming on, but he just didn’t need the distraction or to be slowed down. He’d more than likely just push them out of the way, but it wouldn’t be gentle, and he didn’t want them to think that he was a threat.</p><p>That would be dangerous.</p><p>He could feel the wolf inside of him leap back and forth at each step he took, closer to the garden, closer to outside, closer to the <i>moon</i>. The need to be under the moon thrummed in his very veins.</p><p>It felt almost like the moon was calling out to him.</p><p>The overwhelming need to get out was confusing his mind, however, when he was trying to find his way out. He’d walked the way hundreds of times it felt like, but never this late, and his mind didn’t seem to want to focus on something as minimal as finding the correct way.</p><p>Instead he looked out the first window he saw on his way, a big one from floor to ceiling. Outside was the moon, illuminating the garden.</p><p>The wolf inside him didn’t think, it just physically moved his body, but just as he got ready to jump through the glass a hand came to rest on his shoulder and stopped him.</p><p>He whirled around, the world swimming a little in front of his eyes, and he tried to get them to focus.</p><p>His husband.</p><p>“My lord,” he breathed and went to bow before lord Styles’ hand shot out to stop him.</p><p>He shook his head, wetting his lips (terribly distracting, that was). “No, please, there’s no need for that.”</p><p>Louis didn’t answer, just stared at him for a bit, before his wolf squirmed on the inside.</p><p>Out, out, out, out.</p><p>He tried turning in against the hand holding him still, tried to get back to the window, and jump.</p><p>“No, Louis,” his husband said again, “no, let’s take the stairs, this time. So you don’t get hurt.”</p><p>He wouldn’t have gotten hurt, not like this, but his husband took his hand to lead him before he could object, so he let him follow him down the hall, down the staircase a bit further down. At the end of that, a vampire stood, candle in hand.</p><p>“My lord,” the vampire greeted his husband first, then nodded to Louis, “sir.”</p><p>Had it been any other day, any other hour, Louis would have taken notice of that. As it was, though, simple pleasantries exchanged between vampires was very far down the list of things he cared about.</p><p>The vampire opened the big oak door, and when Louis looked out, he froze the second he felt the moon’s rays on him.</p><p>It was like exhaling after holding your breath.</p><p>Like coming up for air after having been underwater, kicking your way to the surface.</p><p>The lord let his hand slip from his, he dimly noted, as he slowly stepped forward. It almost felt like floating, more than it did walking.</p><p>Standing underneath the moon, excitement thrumming through his veins, was always an exhilarating feeling. The feeling of almost being done with a race, with no need to rush to the finish line, just being able to savour the feeling of accomplishment and success.</p><p>No sound was made, except from the wind’s rustling of the trees, an owl, and crickets further down in the garden.</p><p>This was nature. This was night. This was life.</p><p>This was freedom.</p><p>He let his wolf out.</p>
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    <b>***</b>
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</div>It always took a minute to get back into his own body and mind when he shifted. When he felt all the emotions, his wolf felt. When he finally opened himself up to all the different sounds, smells, surroundings, around him, all the things his wolf were really experiencing for the first time.<p>The relief that came with shifting.</p><p>The feeling of stretching his mind and body in just the correct ways, the ways his entire being had been yearning for ever since he came here the first day.</p><p>Looking up at the moon, feeling its light illuminate him, bless him, he couldn’t hold back the howl. He knew it wouldn’t be good for his relationship with the vampires; he wasn’t sure they’d ever heard a howl that didn’t signify an attack.</p><p>He hoped they’d somehow plugged their ears this night.</p><p>The howl faded out, and his wolf stood staunt, waiting for the reply he always got from his pack, no matter where he was.</p><p>Almost wanting to facepalm himself, he reminded himself, reminded the wolf, that they weren’t in their territory. No one was gonna answer him, not here.</p><p>Without the answering howl, the moonlight seemed a bit dimmer.</p><p>The trees around him, the flowers, it was all beautiful, put in place immaculately, eye on every single detail.</p><p>His wolf shuddered.</p><p>This wasn’t nature.</p><p>This wasn’t freedom.</p><p>This was yet another gilded case.</p><p>He whined, not being able to hold it down, his wolf hurting too much, his heart weighing too much. </p><p>Subdued, he walked forward, further into the garden. Watching the way the moon reflected on the pond, watched the fishes swimming below the surface. Listened to the sounds around. Focused on the feeling of wind in his fur.</p><p>The only thing that he was really thankful for, was that at least it was peaceful out here.</p><p>“Louis?”</p><p>He didn’t turn around as such, but he shook out his fur.</p><p>“Louis?”, his husband asked again, voice gentle though cautious.</p><p>No, not cautious. He wasn’t afraid. Louis didn’t have a heartbeat to go off when determining this, but he doubted that the lord of the vampires would be afraid of one lone wolf. The pack survives, the saying went, and the lone wolf dies.</p><p>Louis turned around.</p><p>Harry was sitting on a bench further back, closer to the house. Not so close that it seemed like he was ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Actually, just, respectful of Louis and his personal space while shifting.</p><p>Louis wanted him closer, though.</p><p>He wanted Harry - he’d called him Harry hadn’t he? Now, that was something.</p><p>He lied down, whining, hoping it would make Harry want to get closer. He kept eye contact with the other, hoping that would make it easier to translate his wants.</p><p>Harry did come closer. Slowly. Too slowly. Louis rolled around in the dirt, tail wagging back and forth, like the smaller dogs that sometimes had passed through the village back home.</p><p>Harry knelt down beside him, looking almost as if he wanted to propose. If they’d been real spouses, Louis would have known how this felt already. As it was, they weren’t real spouses, purely out of convenience, to secure peace.</p><p>Louis unintentionally whined at those thoughts.</p><p>“I’m sorry you can’t be free tonight,” Harry whispered, clearly misunderstanding the whine, and Louis neither could not would, really, want to correct him. He was upset about that also. “Next time, I promise.”</p><p>He didn’t think Harry could promise that, not even as lord of the vampires, but that was another worry, for another day, he decided. Right now, he needed to find a way to get Harry to pet him.</p><p>He’d never wanted that before, had often growled at someone who’d tried to lay a hand on him while he was transformed. There was something special about having another touch your fur, it wasn’t inherently romantic or anything, but it was intimate. It was like having someone card their fingers through your hair.</p><p>“It’s peaceful out here, though,” Harry said quietly, “under the moonlight. We have all of eternity, us vampires, and yet we never learn to appreciate the small things.”</p><p>Louis had a fleeting thought of how, when the peace was more well established and trust had been tentatively built between the two races, they each could learn something from the other. Vampires could learn how to appreciate nature. They may not be alive as such, but everything around them was.</p><p>They may be eternal, but nothing else was. And if you don’t appreciate the beauty that’s there when it is, you might not see it again.</p><p>Beauty was so fleeting.</p><p>Vampires could in turn teach them of creating for prosperity. Creating things that were meant to <i>last</i>. Being as attuned to nature as they were, wasn’t the perfect solution.</p><p>All things in life need balance.</p><p>Now, though, the most important objective lied in getting Harry to pet him. Harry would be gentle with his fur. He just knew he would.</p><p>He lifted his head and butted it against Harry’s leg, causing the other to look at him with confusion in his eyes. He butted his leg again.</p><p>“Do you want me to move?”, Harry sounded unsure.</p><p>Louis whined at that, he couldn’t shake his head properly or voice his objection to that suggestion, so all he could do was whine. Again.</p><p>He’d done more whining tonight than he ever had before in such a short amount of time, he felt. Except for in the battles, maybe. But then he’d be able to howl, and he knew he’d feel and hear his pain reflected back in the answering cries.</p><p>Here, he had nothing and no one to communicate with, except for Harry.</p><p>Harry couldn’t leave.</p><p>“What do you want?”, Harry said, a tad desperately, throwing out his hand so as to underline him giving up. It was exactly what Louis had needed though.</p><p>He lifted his head up to the hand, and it froze for a second, until Harry caught up to what Louis wanted.</p><p>When he turned his head to look at the other, his eyes shone in a quite peculiar way. It almost seemed to glint, like a star, he thought. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say Harry’s eyes were wet.</p><p>He did know better, though, so he pushed his thoughts about it out of his head, and continued his mission to be pet.</p><p>When Harry’s fingers carded through his fur for the first time, it felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and he laid his head back down. And closed his eyes. It would have been easy, so easy, for lord Styles to turn against him, if that was what he wanted to do.</p><p>It’d have been a strange plan, even for the young lord, counting on Louis to become malleable as the full moon rose and he turned into a wolf for the first time, luring him into a false security to really let down his guards.</p><p>Stranger things had happened of course, but Harry didn’t do any of that.</p><p>Instead, he continued petting him. His touch gentle, almost reverent.</p><p>“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, and Louis let out a content sound.</p><p>Harry teased it sounded like a dog barking. A small one.</p><p>Louis yipped at that which solicited a <i>laugh</i> from Harry.</p>
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    <b>***</b>
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</div>Things didn’t change as such after the full moon. Not overall. But small, subtle changes happened, and they were exactly what Louis had needed.<p>Instead of maids bringing up Louis’ food for him to eat by himself, Harry spent the meal times with him. The first few times, Louis had felt too awkward to do much but nip at the food, using a knife and fork, even for easy meals that could easily be eaten with hands. Like rye bread.</p><p>“You know,” Harry had remarked the first time he saw Louis eating that, “it’s the first recipe my chefs didn’t know beforehand.”</p><p>“Rye bread?”, Louis asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of it. So easy to make, so easy to satisfy people’s hunger despite not having much for them to eat.</p><p>He supposed that when your food came from blood, you didn’t need to worry about making food from scarce resources.</p><p>The first few times Harry had come in, he’d eaten raw meat, almost dripping with blood. Louis had been confused as to why he did it, especially because he didn’t seem to necessarily enjoy it even. It looked like it was quality meat, so it definitely couldn’t be that that was the root of Harry’s discomfort.</p><p>And then it had hit him.</p><p>“You know,” Louis started out casually, “you <i>can</i> bring your blood with you instead of fooling around.”</p><p>Harry looked delightfully caught unaware, and Louis almost pitied him enough not to laugh at his expression. Almost.</p><p>For some reason, Louis’ laugh just made Harry’s face relax into a calm expression.</p><p>That had happened more and more as well, the past weeks. Harry being at ease with him, or being put at ease by Louis’ expressions of happiness and glee. </p><p>He supposed it was Harry’s way of confirming that this peace wasn’t going anywhere. He was content, he wasn’t gonna rebel against the vampires, he wasn’t gonna send out distress signals for his pack to attack the vampire covens.</p><p>And he supposed that was one step in a better direction.</p><p>For there to be anything to build on, there needed to be a foundation. Trust was that foundation. They both needed to trust they each had the best intentions, that they weren’t doing this - marrying for the sake of the peace - with any hidden intentions.</p><p>No, things hadn’t changed majorly over the last couple of weeks, but they had changed enough to give Louis some semblance of hope for the future.</p><p>For the future they would hopefully share together. In some form or another. The peace needed to last, and it was easy to make it last through their marriage.</p><p>Obviously, their union couldn’t sustain the peace alone. But as he said, for anything to be built there needs to be a foundation that can hold. Trust. Trust quickly established can just as easily be broken. It needed to happen gradually. Things take time, and they had all the time in the world.</p><p>Harry started accompanying him around the garden as well. Telling him facts about the flowers growing in there, flowers Louis had never seen before, that he was told was just as beautiful in the world, but for them to coexist it needed to happen under careful terms. They needed to be supervised.</p><p>Out in the wild, in the forest, on the fields, where Louis had spent his days, there was no supervision of the plants. Everything, apart from food and medicinal herbs, had been allowed to grow organically. And nature at its wildest was absolutely beautiful.</p><p>Louis could however also appreciate the immaculateness of the garden. The flowers were stunning, and they seemed healthy enough. And they made Harry puff his chest with pride, as if he was the one who spent hours caring for them.</p><p>Knowing him, the little that Louis was absolutely sure that he did know, he probably had done exactly that before becoming a lord. The lord.</p><p>It’d been a night like most others when Harry broached the subject that Louis hadn’t been able to stop thinking about from the day that the full moon had passed, and he shifted back.</p><p>“Louis,” Harry started, and Louis had to stop himself from cringing at the thought, “what happened at the end of the last full moon, how can I stop it?”</p><p>The garden hadn’t been bad to spend the full moon in. It’d been beautiful, he’d been under the open sky, under the stars, and illuminated by the moonlight. He’d been outside, not constricted by any roofs, windows, nor any chains. Free to move around, with Harry moving either beside him or somewhere close. Something he would have thought of as constricting when he first arrived and married the lord, but he hadn’t minded Harry’s presence one bit those days.</p><p>Louis took a sip of his water, mulling over how to answer it.</p><p>Shifting back hadn’t been easy. His wolf had been denied the chance for weeks, and it had been denied the chance to run with nature, become one with the moon, the forest, and himself. Like he’d done on every other full moon since he’d been old enough to shift and join the older wolves’ moon run.</p><p>When changing back a few weeks ago, his wolf had, for the first time, fought back. Every step of the way, every changing bone, had been innately fought against.</p><p>He’d passed out just as he’d changed back completely. And apparently the doctor had had to set a few bones correctly that had broken in the process of changing.</p><p>Harry sounded scared as he’d recounted the events to a sleep-mussed Louis the day he woke up again.</p><p>“My wolf needs the nature, I told you this before,” he said, looking out, not being able to stop himself from letting his eyes seeking out the forest, “when denied, it’ll fight back for its right to be cared for. Cut off from nature, it’ll rebel.”</p><p>“Has that happened before?”, Harry sounded like he didn’t know what he would prefer. As if knowing that it wasn’t the first occurrence would alleviate some of the guilt, but also knowing it had happened multiple times caused him pain as well.</p><p>“Not to me, no,” Louis told him, “but it happened to a wolf around my birth. He left peacefully as a wild wolf, and never came back. Another wolf went insane and we had to put her down as she went for the pups.”</p><p>Harry looked, if even possible, more pale than usual. Louis wanted to ask him whether he was intaking enough blood.</p><p>Too little blood, especially granted he lived on animal blood, was dangerous. It made vampires sluggish, slow, easy targets.</p><p>Blood deprivation had been one of the first strategies that had been used under the war for interrogation.</p><p>The thought made him shudder now. What had seemed necessary under the war, seemed so deranged and cruel in the light of the peace they were now enjoying.</p><p>“How would your wolf be placated?” He sounded defeated. As if he already knew the answer and was ready to give in if pushed, even though he wouldn’t be happy about it.</p><p>Louis sighed. “To be allowed to run in the forest.”</p><p>Harry nodded, closing his eyes, fingers coming up to rub his temples. As if he had a headache. He didn’t know vampires could even get headaches, or whether it was merely Harry being irritated.</p><p>“I figured.”</p><p>Louis didn’t dare say anything, he couldn’t quite sense where Harry was headed, what he was thinking. Would he let Louis out into the open, into the free, or was it still too early. Was the foundation too weak still? Too unstable?</p><p>“I’ll come with you, then.”</p><p>Louis felt so confused, he immediately blurted out: “Come with me?”</p><p>Harry shook his head as if Louis was too slow on the uptake, but he had a little smile on his lips as well.</p><p>“I’ll go with you into the forest, so you can run free,” he elaborated, and Louis felt like he’d been punched in the gut for how relieved he felt. </p><p>Whatever reason he really had, whether it was to keep an eye on that he didn’t run home the first chance he had, but that that was the reason he’d chosen to give was a sweet sentiment. Louis appreciated that. It was nice thinking his husband cared for that, that he cared for a part of Louis that laid beyond the power Louis’ position gave him in terms of negotiating and information.</p><p>“That’d be nice,” he said, he’d never really ran with humans before. Or a vampire, as it’d be this time. Humans were slow, but vampires ran as fast as wolves, sometimes even faster. When it wasn’t a full moon.</p><p>“You just have to take care of yourself,” Louis reminded him, looking up from the food, “a bite can prove fatal if you don’t take care. I’ll be present, of course, but becoming one with nature having been cut off from it - it’s an exhilarating experience. I won’t be fully there for a few minutes, I don’t want to hurt you.”</p><p>Harry looked at him for a few seconds before a small smile spread on his lips, and Louis had to look down again. Not because he was blushing, but because, he didn’t know why, it just made his stomach feel weird. Like when he’d tested out saying Harry’s name aloud, something he hadn’t done since.</p><p>The thing was, he didn’t mind making Harry smile, again and again.</p><p>“That’s kind of you to think of, Louis,” Harry said pleasantly.</p><p>Louis made a face at that. “I don’t know about kind, it just wouldn’t do to upset the peace.”</p><p>There was a moment of silence, and when he looked up, Harry was looking at him with a slight frown on his face. Something that smoothed out as soon as they locked eyes.</p><p>“Yes,” he agreed, his voice sounding strange, “it wouldn’t do to upset the peace.”</p><p>The rest of the night went by quickly, and even though Harry didn’t outwardly change his behaviour, it still left Louis with a sour taste in his mouth and a stone in his stomach. As if he’d said something terribly wrong that had upset Harry, that had upset the dynamic between him.</p><p>Maybe it was because Harry didn’t smile after that. Not really, not one that seemed to make him appear as alive as he once was.</p><p>“When will we leave?”, he asked Harry, just after he had bid him goodnight.</p><p>Harry hesitated on the doorstep before turning back to face Louis again. “I’ll have to sort out the last affairs, and then we can leave. It’ll not take more than a few days.”</p><p>Louis nodded his assent.</p><p>A few days was nothing, he had been inside this castle of rocks and stone for much longer than that. Of course, the promise of freedom soon would make the days grow longer, as time always slowed down when you were counting down towards something. He remembered still the days before his birthday when he was smaller, the way days felt like weeks, hours like days, minutes like hours. And though there was no promises of celebration and cake, no celebration of a run under the starlight in the snow, this time around he felt even more giddy than he ever had as a kid.</p><p>He was getting a taste of freedom.</p>
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    <b>***</b>
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</div>The day they left, Harry had, for the first time since Louis had agreed to marry him, asked him to appear in the throne room. Or he had had a maid pass on his husband’s wish that he appear at court. Louis hadn’t really understood at first, it had been months, and he’d never been wanted at court before. Nor had he wanted to appear. He was here for one thing only, to secure the peace, he hadn’t wanted to meddle in their own affairs. He naught knew anything of their culture, of their traditions, that hadn’t somehow held any strategic value to him.<p>There, he wondered briefly, may have lain his failure in leading his people to victory. Harry, it seemed, had cared for every bit of the werewolves’ tradition and lifestyle, and from there he’d been able to deduce the best strategy to fight and defeat Louis’ people.</p><p>But the past was the past. Hopefully none of them would have to use this information in war ever again.</p><p>As the maid led him through the corridors, he looked around to, for the first time, admire the architecture. It had all seemed so cold and foreign to him in the beginning, so lifeless. He’d felt cut off from nature, but as he looks at the carvings of stone, he can see traces of nature everywhere. Immortalised flower and leaf carvings. Wall paintings depicting beautiful sights found in nature. He’d been so focused on how it differed from his own culture that he’d failed to realise that for the vampires, for those who live forever, they’d want things around them that would live forever as well. And anything that was actually alive was kept under strict control.</p><p>Perfection, he thought, was something everyone strove for, and those who lived for all eternity were the only ones who would ever achieve it.</p><p>“How old is the castle?”, he asked the maid walking a bit ahead of him.</p><p>She didn’t say anything for a bit, but when she did, she sounded- alive? She sounded interested. Something he hadn’t found in any of the servants assigned him during the time he’d been here, they’d been detached, professional, cold.</p><p>“Hundreds of years old, milord,” she told him with the hint of smile, he thought, from what he could see of her face. “The throne room is much older than anything else, it is an old ruin from before vampires ever existed, back when mankind lived and died in the blink of an eye. They built beautiful buildings, but nothing lasts forever if it is not maintained. We found the ruins of greatness and built our own on its grave.”</p><p>“It’s beautiful craftmanship,” he offered her and added, “thank you.”</p><p>“Of course, milord.”</p><p>She didn’t lead him through the entrance hall - that had been majestic, with a ceiling he hadn’t had time to admire the last time, its details too intricate - but rather through a long, small corridor that ran parallel to the throne room, elevated enough that he through the windows could look down upon the vampires gathered there.</p><p>There wasn’t quite as many as there were the day he’d last been here, for the peace talks, nor at his wedding, but it was still a sizeable crowd. He hoped that Harry did not mean for him to take petitions; he would not know how to help anyone in a land he does not know how functions.</p><p>He cursed his own ignorance, his blindness in the past war. That he had not cared for the people, just the way they waged war. He’d always known that a people made up the country, and it’d the people you’d meet on the battlefield, and yet he’d focused not on their domestic policies, their traditions. Things he was sure would have made him more fit for the title and position his marriage had granted him.</p><p>Lord viscount.</p><p>The maid led him all the way to the end of the corridor, through a small wooden door, to reveal a side chamber. It was small, and he wondered whether this was perhaps such a room that he’d been offered the day they negotiated the peace. Somewhere close they could go and discuss whether they’d accept the terms for the vampires’ peace offering.</p><p>The thought made him want to scoff, as if they’d ever had any other choice but lay down their arms and accept whatever terms the vampires had decided.</p><p>But it was in the past.</p><p>It was bad blood that had dried.</p><p>Waiting inside the chamber, that most resembles a small office, was Harry. Locking eyes with his husband, Louis felt a weird, involuntarily rush of relief. It’d been days since Harry had had time to sit down for their usual game of chess. Citing that he was busy sorting out the last few deals and troubles before they left, as the reason for why they hadn’t seen each other.</p><p>He secretly hope that one day, they might share the burdens of ruling, so that Harry wouldn’t be as burdened as he is now. He knew their marriage was not a true one, had known it from the first day - hadn’t even wanted it to be anything but the sham it was. But now, now he thinks it might be nice to get to know the history of his husband’s people, share the history of his own, and together guide their two countries to lasting peace.</p><p>“Louis,” Harry smiled, walked with open arms to greet him, and Louis tried not to look too confused when Harry went to grab Louis’ shoulders and press a kiss upon his cheek. A kiss that burned his skin even after Harry’s lips had left it.</p><p>“Hu-husband,” he got out while searching Harry’s eyes for answers.</p><p>Harry merely smiled serenely, keeping a hand on his shoulder, but sliding it around to rest on his hip, keeping Louis almost nestled to his side.</p><p>It felt surprisingly comfortable, despite the fact that Louis’ skin burned where he was pressed to Harry. A nice burn, though.</p><p>“You’ve been remiss in your new duties, Louis,” Harry informed him in a quiet, gentle voice, “and I, more than you, have been remiss in mine. You are our lord viscount, it is no empty title. You must know how to lead my, now our, people. So today, you will learn.”</p><p>Louis spluttered, “husband, I cannot learn everything about governing in a day-”</p><p>Harry’s hand squeezed his wrist from where it was hanging by his side. “No, no, I do not expect you to. But you will learn a bit today, and when we return you will learn more.”</p><p>Louis smiled and nodded. “It would be an honour.”</p><p>He could feel Harry turn his head against Louis’, felt him plant a kiss on the top of his head, and he felt warm, inside and out. A feeling he hadn’t thought he’d ever feel again, here amongst the cold stones, but even stones held warmth he chastised himself. He should not be so small minded.</p><p>This was his house, that was his husband, and out there were his people.</p><p>And his new people were interesting, and he could see just how alive they were as he watched them debate from where he was perched in the window of the corridor, looking down on the throne room below him.</p><p>They were alive, they were intelligent, and they had problems just as Louis’ people back home had. Where his people’s problems were more focused on agriculture and hunting, here there problems with cattle, with the growing population density in the bigger towns.</p><p>He’d once thought the vampiric culture and people more refined than his own, more evolved, but listening to their petitions he realised that no culture was superior to the other. They just valued very different things, and, in an unguarded moment of ideation, he thought about how well they complimented each other. That the skills vampires possessed were the skills his people lacked, and vice versa.</p><p>Looking at his husband, he thought, though it was perhaps little more than a dream, that there sat someone who he could go into the future with and unite their two peoples peacefully. There was someone he would be proud to call his husband, his partner.</p><p>His husband looked truly regal as he sat upon his throne, and now that he wasn’t being looked down upon as if he was nothing but a nuisance, Louis could admit to himself that he’d never seen someone so well balanced under the weight of power.</p><p>He looked, all carved from marble, with his head held high and his voice sounding clear, like the kings of old that men had fought eternal wars for, built visions of grandness for - and toppled again.</p><p>And when Harry came to join him, Louis felt such a want to run to his arms that he had to physically stop his hand from shaking. The feeling was jittery, and Louis had never felt so uncomfortable, all hot, and wandering eyes that couldn’t stop looking at his husband’s lips.</p><p>He’d never felt like before, he’d never acted like this before. He felt as if he was a stranger in his own body.</p><p>“You did well,” Louis offered, voice coming out a bit strange even to his own ears.</p><p>Harry bent his head in thanks. “Did you learn?”</p><p>Louis nodded. “Your people are interesting.”</p><p>Harry smiled. “Our people.”</p>
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    <b>***</b>
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</div>Leaving the castle grounds hadn’t been as sensational as he’d thought. After having been banned from crossing the invisible barrier at the edge of the forest since he’d arrived here, he’d almost felt as if the world had to somehow rearrange itself the second he went over the forbidden line. But nothing happened. The birds chirped the same, the wind rattled the trees the same, and the sun beamed down at them the same it had a second ago.<p>And yet, <i>he</i> felt different. He felt victorious somehow, having been able to cross the border into what resembled his own land so much more than what they’d left behind.</p><p>It felt good to be amongst trees again, and he couldn’t wait until they’d wandered so far that when he looked behind him, he wouldn’t see anything but trees. That they’d made it so far away from the castle that, despite him now wanting to put in a better effort to know about vampires, had essentially functioned as his prison, his room being his cage within it.</p><p>Here, way out here, in the woods, there wasn’t anything besides their walking to disturb the peace and quiet. Here life found its own way. Here the animals had their own ways, their own struggles. It put everything in perspective, had helped through many a dark time when the fighting in the war had seemed its most pointless. Even here, amongst animals, was there fighting to be found. They fought for much the same as the vampires and werewolves had fought about, at the end; territory, food, family.</p><p>His mum had often told him that they’d come from nature, and to nature they would return. Everything was a cycle, and just because they, werewolves, led more complicated lives than their animal counterparts, did not make them superior. They built houses, wolves dug or found holes. Between that, there was no difference, they both built to keep themselves and their family warm and safe.</p><p>“Are you alright?”, Harry asked him, and Louis turned to him.</p><p>He nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, I am alright, I am more than alright really.”</p><p>“This forest,” Harry began, looking around, as if he wasn’t sure of himself, “this makes you happy?”</p><p>Louis smiled a bit at that, where he a month ago might have found the question offending, now he found it endearing. He could not give a reason for why, really.</p><p>“Not this specific forest, no,” he explained, “though it is very nice indeed. It’s more being in the nature again, being amongst only life. It makes me feel more settled, I grew up in the forest. I’d never been without this feeling, this freedom, of being able to walk away from all other human life before.”</p><p>When Harry didn’t answer, Louis looked over at him confused as to what was keeping him. The other looked practically distraught.</p><p>“Harry?”, he said tentatively, not even really comprehending that he’d said his husband’s name out loud until Harry blinked surprised, and he immediately said, “husband?”</p><p>Harry looked at him dazed before blinking, like he was waking himself from a daydream. “I’m sorry, my thoughts ran away with me. But Louis, Louis, have I deprived you ever since you got here?”</p><p>Louis thought a bit about it, felt the need to spare his husband from the worst details.</p><p>“Not deprived exactly,” he said hesitatingly, “only during the full moon was I really stressed out, but being separated from nature isn’t something I’ve ever done before. It wasn’t something I was prepared for when we went to negotiate the peace, that I’d be locked behind stonewalls for months.”</p><p>Harry looked as if Louis had struck him.</p><p>“I’m sorry, I thought the garden was enough, I should have listened to you more.”</p><p>He shrugged. “You should have, the garden is too pristine, too bubblewrapped, to ever feel like nature. Out here it’s wild and alive, everything that grows is growing on its own, every day is a new struggle to survive. Nature is ruthless, everyone is, really, on their own, but it is also beautiful in that sense.”</p><p>Looking around, trying to keep still, keep his breathing quiet, he once again can’t begin to fathom the wonder of nature. </p><p>“Have you ever spent time in nature like this?”</p><p>He looked over at his husband who just shook his head, wide-eyed, looking around the forest himself.</p><p>“It’s peaceful,” he told him, “especially for you, you can make yourself completely silent, more silent than the trees even. Just listening and observing nature. My mum used to say that it was the greatest gift we’d been given, being able to transform into wolves and experiencing nature for ourselves as it should be experienced. Be one with it, instead of watching it from the outside.”</p><p>“You already look part of it now,” Harry confessed quietly, and Louis smiled at that, couldn’t hold back the laughter, really.</p><p>“My hair looks that much like a bird’s nest?”</p><p>Harry looked almost panicked a moment and rushed into reassuring him that, “no, no! Not at all, it’s just you look so happy, peaceful here. Like this is where you were always meant to be.”</p><p>He shrugged. “It is as I told you, werewolves are part nature, so in the nature we partly belong.”</p><p>There was quiet for a bit. Not completely silent, no not silent. Nature is never silent. There was always a rustling of the leaves by the wind, some animal that moved somewhere. Nature never stood still, always moving, evolving, living.</p><p>So very different from what Harry was used to back in his castle.</p><p>“The gardens,” Louis began gently, “are very lovely, and I have enjoyed walking through them. Your gardener takes of his plants with love and care. But nature is not a garden, nature is just that; nature. It is wild, imperfect, even unwelcome at times. But it is also life in its purest form.”</p><p>“We don’t like mistakes,” Harry rebutted, “when you have an eternity, there is no reason to not focus on being the best at what you love.”</p><p>Louis nodded, his earlier thoughts confirmed at that statement.</p><p>“That is perhaps why we’ve never gotten along, vampires and werewolves,” he thought out loud, seeing Harry look at him confused from the corner of his eye. “You see eternity as a gift, a way to better yourselves, always striving for a better tomorrow till the end of times. We treasure nature so much we fall in love with its imperfections, its mortality.”</p><p>He didn’t elaborate further on it. Werewolves could live forever, if that is what they desired, on par with vampires. But he hadn’t ever heard records of any werewolf that hadn’t broken faith with that gift at some point down line. Yes, werewolves had been recorded to resist the temptation of the next world for hundreds of years; long, long before the war broke out, a vampire and werewolf couple, the only ever noted in history, supposedly made it 398 years before the werewolf let themselves grow old.</p><p>It was a cruel fate, he had always thought, to leave behind the one you’d spent your life with, knowing they could not follow you as easily, naturally.</p><p>Louis had always thought he’d live through the normal age of a human, life was spectacular, beautiful, painful, and to him, it had only ever made sense if there also was an end to it all. Why chase happiness if you had all eternity? Why dare risk yourself pain if you had all eternity? Why do anything today, if you had all the tomorrows till the end of time?</p><p>But as the war had stretched on and on, he’d never gotten around to making a choice. As long as the war had roared, he hadn’t been able to lay down his life, he hadn’t wanted to. So many were dying, without being ready. He couldn’t abandon his people. In the brief months of relative peace, of the brief ceasefires that had been agreed upon through the years, he’d seen people from his pack let go, slowly but surely.</p><p>He hadn’t ever known how anyone made the choice; if it was through prayer, a wish upon a star, or simply something the wolf inside him could feel on their own. When it was time beginning to let go. </p><p>Looking around at the trees, tall and strong, and down at the leaves, dead and faded, thinking of ‘letting go’ is a funny concept.</p><p>When the day comes, he thought, looking back at his husband, when the day to let go comes, he should like it to be as painless and easy as when a leaf falls. One second it lives, the other it has been detached and is slowly, slowly falling.</p><p>He’d been told before that it is like falling asleep. </p><p>“What are you pondering, my husband?” Harry inquired with a smile. “Your brain is working so much, I can hear the wheels turn from here.</p><p>Louis couldn’t hold his startled laugh back.</p><p>His lord husband making a joke. Fancy that.</p><p>Louis shook his head. “Nothing much, the circle of life.”</p><p>“A heavy topic,” Harry granted, “let us now continue. The forest here is gorgeous, but I dare say it’s still too close to the castle.”</p><p>And they did continue on from there, mostly in silence. Louis being caught up in looking around in the forest, cataloguing all the new smells, sights, sounds.</p><p>It was not the same kind of forest as the one he was from, it is thicker, darker in a way, but no less beautiful. He would love to spend hours, days, weeks, just running around, exploring, living freely.</p><p>When nightfall came, as it’s prone to do, Harry found them a clear spot that seemed relatively flat and without too many stones, small plants, and tree roots. The tent that was set up was more of a gesture of good will really, Louis had to conclude; Harry did not sleep and out here, Louis could transform. The thought itself making his nerves vibrate in anticipation. </p><p>As Harry stood and admired his handiwork - and it was indeed very good, the way he’d put up the tent - Louis could not hold back anymore. Neither of them had eaten that day, not since midday when they’d left, and though he didn’t know just how long a vampire like Harry could go without blood, he did know that when they’d gone too long it wasn’t a pretty sight.</p><p>“I can hunt for us,” Louis spoke up, and Harry looked at him with a cocked head.</p><p>“Us?”</p><p>Louis nodded firmly. “Our intelligence from the war told us your vampires were primarily feeding from animals.”</p><p>Harry stared at him for a few seconds, maybe trying to figure out how Louis’ intelligence could have found out, or why Louis had decided to bring up the war. It was bad blood that hadn’t yet dried.</p><p>“That is true.”</p><p>“Well, as I don’t need anything but the meat, you can have first taste of the kill.”</p><p>Harry smiled, almost condescendingly, Louis thought, and he wanted to hide himself in a hole for a brief second. And then he remembered who he was; he was Louis Tomlinson, second in command of his werewolf pack, lord viscount of the vampire coven. Where Louis had been sworn into a position of power, however symbolic it was, in the vampire coven, Harry had not been granted an equal title with Louis’ own pack.</p><p>If Harry was gonna lecture him on anything, it was his own mistake for not letting Louis know about the rules in the first place.</p><p>“We usually only hunt in special sectors, to proper administrate the amount of animals-”, Harry trailed off on his own before he looked thoughtfully at Louis. Then he waved his hand. “One kill probably won’t mess the statistics up too much. Do you wanna shift for the hunt?”</p><p>Louis smiled grimly.</p>
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    <b>***</b>
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</div>Hunting was exhilarating in a way very few things were. Especially after not having done it for a while, even more so when he hadn’t even shifted for a while.<p>And was it ever so sweet, feeling out his legs, his body, his fur, as he’d finished the transformation. Never, he thought, had he been this alive. The world, his body, is thrumming with the promise of a good hunt, of running through the woods. It is almost as if he was back home.</p><p>All that is missing is his pack. His litter mates. His mother.</p><p>He almost admonished himself at that, he was lucky. He was in nature again, amongst its imperfections, its smells, sounds, life. For his wolf, though they both missed his family, this was as good as his own territory. It was new, yes, and that was the exciting bit. Here he didn’t know what he might encounter, but it was sure to be an adventure.</p><p>Searching out the deer took longer than it would normally, as he got distracted so very easily by the slightest new impression. The deer was moving slowly, not out of sickness og age, but out of the leisureness that came with what Harry called administering the animals. These animals, he came to realise, were in their own way just as manufactured as the gardens. The only thing, the vampires did not control, was nature, the trees, the small animals, the way plants fought amongst themselves.</p><p>These animals, though there were a small number of predators from what he could smell on the trail he was following - the smells all old, were more like cattle than wildlife in his opinion. They weren’t used to being hunted, they were just used to being caught.</p><p>Dusk had turned to proper nightfall when he finally came back with the dead animal, and Harry looked up from where he sat by the fire that had been started while Louis was gone. Louis looked over briefly as he jogged to the other side of the fire, further from the tent, and it seemed that his lord husband had been cutting wood. A little wood man to be exact.</p><p>It was surprisingly humane of him.</p><p>But then again, Louis had to contest, Harry had surprised him from the moment he’d actually started spending time with his lord husband.</p><p>“A fine kill, Louis,” Harry told him with a smile, and a hungry gleam in his house. Louis had to force himself not to swing his tail. He was no dog. “will you eat like this?”</p><p>Louis nodded as best he could, then looked down at his kill before pushing it with his snout towards Harry. He would eat first.</p><p>They weren’t stuck in the olden days, but something inside him told him that it was good to be a husband and be able to provide for his spouse. And, though it was only a feeding of blood, it did feel good to be able to give back to Harry, if only a bit.</p><p>It didn’t take too long for Harry to finish, though it didn’t look like he’d been feeding with much haste either. It felt good being out here, away from the schedules, the ever-running-around maids, the stones, the manufactured life. It felt good just living life at its own pace for a bit.</p><p>When Louis had finished eating, Harry slowly approached him, and it struck Louis in a flash that while they might have spent a long time together, Harry had only seen his wolf once. And just like Louis had needed to make new memories, new experiences, of vampires, Harry had only ever seen werewolves as his enemy. </p><p>Werewolves, though while they were both fed and it wasn’t a full moon the power imbalance wasn’t too great, huge creatures that any vampire would be struggling to take down. Harry knew <i>Louis</i>, but he supposed that for those who hadn’t grown up amongst wolves, likening Louis to the wolf he now was could be a struggle.</p><p>Louis, in an attempt to calm his husband, show him that he well and truly meant no harm, laid down on his stomach, baring it. Never before had he ever done that before, and he simply prayed that Harry would not do anything to betray his trust.</p><p>He hated himself for even needing to think the thought.</p><p>Harry smiled briefly before he raised his hand, Louis stretched his neck to see what was in it. A water bottle. How… peculiar.</p><p>The confusion must somehow have translated to his face or eyes because Harry shook his head and smiled gently.</p><p>“For your muzzle, Lou,” Harry whispered, his voice sounding so nice and soft in the quietness of the night, “it’s covered in blood.”</p><p>Louis closed his eyes as Harry gently washed the fur on his face and neck. At the end, just before he moved back on the other side of the fire, Louis sat up and opened his mouth, tongue hanging out.</p><p>“You’re quite demanding as a wolf, you know,” Harry said as he poured water into Louis’ waiting mouth, “but I suppose if you allow me to use your fur as pillow, I’ll allow it.”</p><p>Not having ever had anyone who wasn’t family rest on him, and never in human form, Louis couldn’t deny. For curiosity’s sake, of course.</p><p>If he had curled up around Harry during the night, well, none of them remarked upon in it in the morning.</p>
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    <b>***</b>
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</div>“Your fur is so different from your hair colour,” Harry pointed out, very obviously, though he somehow found it confusing if Louis had to take his creased brows for something, “it is weird because I always thought that the fur would match, well, the drapes?”<p>Had Louis been a human right then, he’d have stared at Harry for quite a while before promptly howl of laughter. As it was, all he could truly do to convey just how truly silly his husband was, was to lick him across the face.</p><p>Something he didn’t take kindly to, if Louis had to use his ‘you should brush your teeth more, Lou’ for something.</p><p>Louis merely huffed, stretching out his legs and pushing Harry away from him.</p><p>The big, mean, scary vampire lord, the one he’d been fighting since the day he was born practically, reacted to that by <i>whining</i>.</p><p>“Lou, stop, I was comfortable-Lou!”</p><p>Not looking back at Harry - his green eyes looking very betrayed which made Louis feel bad even though he really shouldn’t, Harry had insulted him - before he trotted behind to the opening of the tent.</p><p>Quickly he shifted and changed into clothing before going out to join Harry in the sunlight again.</p><p>“Not only do you lick me in the face, you also take away my pillow?” Harry immediately complained, and Louis couldn’t stop himself from giggling at that. His husband was acting like a child.</p><p>“You weren’t gonna get any answers from me like that, about whether the drapes match the coat,” he retorted and winked when a flash of panic crossed Harry’s face when he realised what he’d said.</p><p>“That was not-”</p><p>Louis held up his hands while falling back slowly, leg muscles keeping him from falling down too hard on the ground. Flat and seemingly bare as it was, if he fell upon a stone, he could easily hurt his backend. And if he had any wisdom at all to pass on, it was that the backend was the one bone he’d least like to break again.</p><p>“To answer your question, lord husband,” he interrupted, sparing them both from an embarrassing deflection, “no, the fur doesn’t need to match my hair. Well, I suppose in a few years my hair might resemble the silver of my coat, but as of right now, they don’t match.”</p><p>“It’s beautiful,” Harry told him sincerely, and Louis smiled widely. “You told me of your wartime findings on my people-”</p><p>Again, Louis interrupted, “I apologise, my lord, I shouldn’t have brought it up. We’re in peace time-”</p><p>Harry shook his head, “you shouldn’t have, but war is war, Louis. I too have knowledge of your kind, I by right shouldn’t. We can’t live in fear of acknowledging the mistakes that were made, otherwise we’ll go down that road again.”</p><p>Louis cocked his head. “Would we? Wouldn’t the vampires keep the peace? However biased our history will be written down a hundred years from now, vampires from today, from the war, will still be alive in a hundred years, two hundred years.”</p><p>Harry nodded like he conceded to Louis’ point before making a face. “Memories, Louis, can be fickle. Memories can either be as unimportant to us, when we’re thinking of eternity, as what we had for breakfast last Thursday. We live forever, but memories don’t live forever. At some point the memories of what we sacrificed during this war might fade so much so that we will not hesitate to open fire again - or the memories will be so poisoned by the pain and grief that we will seek revenge.”</p><p>“And you think we won’t want revenge for our dead either?”</p><p>“That’s not what I said nor meant, Louis,” Harry amended quietly, “your species can, but won’t, live forever. The people alive during this war most likely will be gone half a millenia, no one will be there to remind your people of what happened, the sacrifices that were made. The only ones to tell the stories will be just that, stories left behind.”</p><p>“Half a millennia is a very long time, though,” Louis said, “surely if the peace can last that long, it can last for good.”</p><p>Harry smiled a sad smile, and Louis felt terrible being the one to put it there. “A lot can happen in 500 years, and even if nothing happened - 500 years is a long time, but it’s bearable to wait out for those who will see those years again and again.”</p><p>Louis bit his lip, looking from his husband to the sun. It was warm and bright, and as he often did, he marvelled at its presence. A vampire might see millenia upon millenia, but the sun had seen so much more, and yet it hadn’t changed. It had shone down upon the earth the day before, the day a thousand years ago, two hundred thousand years ago, and it would shine the same tomorrow, a thousand years from now, hundred thousand years from now.</p><p>“People,” Harry said, “are just like this forest, it’ll probably look much the same, maybe grow bigger, but every day new plants and animals are born, every day plants and animals die. If the deer all died, the predators would remember them for a long time, the trails they used to trek, their daily routines, but - if they survive - at some point the news will spread that there are no more deer, and they’ll give up their habits of looking for the deer. And the next generation won’t know of the prey deer was, how best to catch them and where.”</p><p>Louis nodded.</p><p>“To keep a story alive forever,” Louis said musingly, almost to himself alone, “the storyteller needs to live forever.”</p><p>He looked to Harry who looked right back.</p>
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</div>Night came, and night went, and when the midday sun was at its peak again, they lay in its sunshine as they had the day before.<p>“What’s the story of vampires?”</p><p>Harry looked up from where he was perched up against the base of a tree, eyes opening half-way, like he couldn’t bother to function properly in the heat. Louis understood exactly how he felt.</p><p>“One full of magic,” he told him with a grin.</p><p>Louis leaned back, covering his eyes with his arm to block out the sun, using the other arm to motion to Harry that he could just begin talking.</p><p>“It’s not very long, not really,” Harry started out by saying, almost apologetically, and Louis just waved his hand in the air, in an attempt to say ‘it doesn’t matter, just tell the story’. “No one knows quite how many years ago, but thousands of years ago, a man was bestowed the highest honour, the greatest gift, by the gods. Where these gods are now, what they were called, hasn’t been saved for prosperity. He was given the gift of immortality, invincibility. Nothing mortal could touch him, could harm him.</p><p>“He had a wife whom he loved and adored above everything in the world, like the planet around the sun, she was the center of his universe. But whereas he, for his service of the gods, could no longer be touched by the bite of passing years, by any disease or bacteria; his wife was not so lucky. A pest swept across the lands and reached their castle as well and took her with it. Driven mad with grief, he called upon the gods to have them give him back his wife. Asking to exchange his gift with the soul of his wife. They refused.”</p><p>A tragic tale, Louis thought. As every love story between mortal and immortal was bound to be. He wondered if the vampire part of the couple from so long ago went mad after the death of their mate. If they were poisoned in anger at their mate choosing death, choosing to leave them behind.</p><p>He wondered what he would do. If he was left behind.</p><p>He supposed that was what he had inadvertently done to his family by marrying Harry. He had hope he would be allowed to return home, as the friendship between him and Harry became stronger, but who knew really. The peace between vampires and werewolves was bigger, more important, than what either of Harry and him wished.</p><p>“Angry at their refusal, he challenged the king of the gods to a duel. Confident in his abilities as a swordsman and warlord, he only laid out what would happen if he won: the gods would return his wife to the world of the living. But gods are gods for a reason, and he lost. In their own anger at his hubris and insulting of their gift, they put a curse on him. He would keep his gift, but it became twisted, evil. No longer driven by grief, he was now driven by an insatiable hunger for blood, always more blood.</p><p>“Alone as he was in his immortality for everyone he met he killed even when it pained him, he once more ventured to speak to the gods. He wished for companions, saying it was the least they could do for cursing him like this. The gods, angry at his arrogance, promised to bestow him the ability to turn humans into the same kind of immortal beings as he was. But everyone he turned was reborn a horrific caricature of who they’d been. Consumed by the same bloodlust as he, but without connection to the human world, they killed without remorse. Seemed to almost relish in it. They were beasts that could not be controlled, so for the third and final time, the man went to the gods for help.”</p><p>Third time’s the charm. Maybe the saying had originated from this tale. Who was to say?</p><p>Probably one of the vampires, he thought to himself. One of them had to have been alive when the phrase was first coined.</p><p>When Harry didn’t immediately go on, Louis lifted his arm from his face and looked over to the other.</p><p>“What did the gods say then?”</p><p>Harry shrugged. “There’s a lot of guesses on what they gave him to help us regain our humanity, but the official ending has been lost.”</p><p>Louis sat up completely, leaning back on the tree behind him, intrigued.</p><p>“What do you think happened?”</p><p>Harry opened his eyes completely, looking directly at Louis. “Personally, I believe the gods taught him how to maintain the fledglings’ connection to life.”</p><p>Louis almost snapped his fingers in order to get Harry to just spit out the answer, but settled for an aborted gesture to make him go on.</p><p>“He was given the way to preserve the ability to love.”</p><p>Love. So simple, Louis mused, and yet so powerful. Was it not that love that made Louis leave behind the life he’d known in order to protect his people? Hell, he thought, it might even have been love that started the fucking war.</p><p>Just like death, he thought love was what made life exciting to live. Unlike death, though, it was not the end that made life worth living. Love made every tomorrow worth it, if only you could keep on loving and being loved in return.</p><p>“I like that idea,” Louis granted, “it’s a beautiful idea.”</p><p>Harry smiled to himself, looking almost proud. Louis bit his lip not to smile at that.</p><p>Then he too hoisted himself up to sit up properly, leaning forwards over his bent knees. “What are your legends?”</p><p>Louis leaned back, trying to <i>think</i> back to the myths they had grown up with.</p><p>“Nothing quite as fanciful as yours,” he said, “but it’s a very important story to us. The first werewolf, we say, was called Beorwulf. Where the gift, the curse, came from, he never found out, and none have since then either. He might have been born with it or made a trickster god jealous. He was a shepherd, a respected member of society, in charge of the biggest flock of sheeps there was, and he had a helper, Peter. One evening, a sheep had wandered off and had not come back for when they needed to bring the sheep home. Peter decided to volunteer to bring it back.</p><p>“The sheep had wandered so far off that night had fallen, and a full moon had risen, before Peter had found the sheep. When he came back to the village in the early hours around dawn, he was as white as a ghost, and when Beorwulf came to see to his lost sheep, Peter told him of a wolf the size of a man which had come - not to kill the sheep but to carry it home. Now, while the wolf hadn’t killed the sheep, the villagers were still terrified at the very thought of an animal so large. For weeks they feared it returned, but it did not, and the villagers warned Peter not to tell stories like that again. Until the next full moon where a loved up couple had decided to, since the wolf was gone, wander under the stars. They were interrupted by Peter who came running, screaming that the wolf was on the loose again. The next morning, the village looked for animal killings the wolf could have done, but they found none. All they found was Beorwulf who had slept with his sheep and he hadn’t seen a thing. Again, Peter was warned not to spread stories of a wolf that did not exist.”</p><p>Louis took a deep breath before pushing himself up so he could walk over and get some water. Talking in this heat made his throat ever so parched.</p><p>After a few big sips, he continued.</p><p>“Peter had now seen the wolf two times, as the only person in the village and both times had been on the full moon. He theorized that maybe it was a god that could shapeshift that came down for a ritual none knew, or it was a changeling. A <i>jætte</i>, a trickster giant. He dared not tell anyone about his thoughts and decided to say he was sick on the next full moon so he could find out who the changeling was. As night fell, he noted Beorwulf going out to check on his sheeps and because Peter held Beorwulf dear to his heart, he decided to go out and help his friend defend his sheeps against the changeling. Only when he followed Beorwulf, he didn’t go to his sheeps, he went to the forest. Peter followed. When the clouds passed by and the moon was shining its brightest, Peter saw his friend turn into a monster, a wolf the size of a man. Peter screamed and ran back to the village, screaming that Beorwulf was the wolf, that he was out there right now.”</p><p>Louis took a few sips more before he went to sit at his previous place against a tree opposite Harry.</p><p>“However, when Peter had woken everyone in the village, gotten them out of bed, and onwards to the edge of the forest where he had seen Beorwulf change; Beorwulf had gone. The village got angry at Peter for lying to them and when Beorwulf never returned to the village, they accused Peter of his murder and killed him for it.”</p><p>Harry sat up with a shock.</p><p>“Killed Peter?”</p><p>“Hanged,” Louis confirmed solemnly.</p><p>“What a story,” Harry said, sounding like he’d expected all endings but that. “But where, how did you become what you are now? Able to change when you want to?”</p><p>Louis shrugged. “The legend never specifies that Beorwulf couldn’t shift on other times than the full moon, but I must confess; I never really paid much attention to these stories. They’re stories made up to make sense of who we are and where we came from, give some semblance of origin if not logic to what we can do. Some say that when Beorwulf fleed, he fled to the forest and stayed there as a wolf, learning how to survive in the wild. Maybe that’s why we’re so connected to nature today.”</p><p>Harry looked interested at him. “Don’t you find it intriguing, though? To know where you originated from?”</p><p>Louis nodded. “I do. I find history interesting, I find history important. I don’t find fairytales and myths important to who I am and what I can do.”</p><p>Harry bristled at that and shook his head, almost in disappointment. “In a world of war like the one we’ve lived in, don’t you find it comforting, the magic of everything we don’t understand?”</p><p>The world was a wondrous place, the world was a hostile place. It all mattered where you looked, in Louis’ opinion</p><p>“I have no need for magical tales of times long past,” Louis said with a smile, “if I need comfort that I’m doing the right thing, I need only look to my family, my friends, my pack. There’s nothing that’s more magical to me than seeing their happiness.”</p><p>Had he been one to get embarrassed easily, he probably would be now. It was so cheesy, such a sugary sweet thing to say, though it <i>was</i> the truth. If he was ever in need of confirmation that fighting the war was the right thing to do, looking at his family, safe and happy, was all he needed to do. Any disillusionment with this world this war might give him, and that was a lot - war was hellish, war was death, war was neverending pain and grief, seeing life in its most beautiful of forms was enough to remind him why he’d been fighting.</p><p>Harry was quiet for so long that Louis thought their conversation to be done, and he got up. Lazing around in the sun was fine for a while, but he was in the <i>forest</i>. Harry might be perfectly comfortable with just enjoying the quiet in the sun, as was his right for he had worked hard and the temperature was certainly enjoyable, but Louis felt jittery all over.</p><p>Just before he readied himself to transform, Harry spoke up, and Louis caught himself in the air, stumbling in an effort to regain his balance.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Louis.”</p><p>Louis blinked at the softness of his voice, so soft that someone with worse hearing would have completely missed it. Had there been a wind to rustle the leaves, Louis might not have heard it either.</p><p>“What for?”, he inquired while thinking over all the possible offences he might have taken to Harry’s words or company the last many hours.</p><p>He could think of none.</p><p>“For taking you away from your family,” his husband said quietly, “for putting the weight of this peace on you, leaving you in an impossible situation.”</p><p>Louis felt like the ground beneath his feet was swaying. Like a rope bridge in a chasm.</p><p>“I did what was necessary for my people, my lord,” Louis tried to reason, “and your demand was small compared to what we had feared-”</p><p>“Gods, how can you say that?” he sounded insulted, desperate, “your life was not mine to bargain with. Please, accept my apology.”</p><p>Louis nodded, feeling tongue-tied. He didn’t understand what had spurred his husband into having this conversation now, at all times, of all places. He didn’t know what to make of the apology either, he had tried so hard to make peace with what had happened months ago, that his sacrifice was nothing compared to those who had lost their lives in war. If his marriage had secured the survival of his people and his husband’s people alike, that was a small price to pay for both of them. Him marrying his husband had meant that his people weren’t asked to pay in land or anything else more valuable to them and their livelihood than <i>him</i>.</p><p>“I’m going for a run,” Louis told him, and Harry just nodded mutely.</p><p>Whether Louis was gonna go running to get the jitters out of the system or to refrain from thinking of Harry's apology, he didn’t know.</p><p>And their trip had gone so well.</p>
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</div>When he came back hours later, Harry had done as he had yesterday, lit a fire.<p>When he saw the light from it, his first thought had been that it was a beacon to guide him home.</p><p>His heart felt a bit tight after that.</p><p>Harry looked up with something akin to hope in his eyes when Louis came trotting back into the clearing in which they had made camp, but seemed to deflate when Louis didn’t go to change back, but instead laid down by the tree he’d been lying against that day.</p><p>Looking at Harry, though, became too pitiful after a bit - his downcast eyes, the stillness that reminded him more of the vampire lord they had come to bargain with than the husband and friend he had come to know.</p><p>And even though he still didn’t want to actually talk to him, didn’t know what to say really, but he couldn’t stand this building chasm between them either. </p><p>He stood up, shook the leaves from his coat, before going over to where Harry sat. The green eyes looking back at him were wide and a bit confused, but Louis didn’t do much but lay down to put his head down on Harry’s legs.</p><p>He could feel him hesitating, hands fledging in the air, before he felt Harry putting his hands down to scratch his head. Louis couldn’t stop himself from closing his eyes, pressing back at the gentle touches. It felt so nice, so nice to be with Harry who was not afraid of his wolf, who saw him as more than just the key to the peace and had apologised for using him like that.</p><p>“Your fur is so nice and soft, Lou,” Harry whispered.</p><p>Had he been in his human form, he would have gone beet red as he realised that he was wagging his tail.</p><p>When Harry noticed him trying to stop, he laughed, and the sound was so nice that Louis didn’t bother to stop. He could indulge in being a dog for tonight. Just tonight.</p>
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    <b>***</b>
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</div>“Do vampires sleep?”, Louis mused in the morning while they were waiting on water for their tea to boil, and Harry looked over at him with surprise and amusement clear on his face.<p>“Not like you do,” he answered, “we don’t need sleep, but like you, and everyone else, reality can get too overwhelming to be aware of at all times. We don’t sleep, it’s more of a self-induced trance.”</p><p>“Do you dream in that self-induced trance?”</p><p>Harry seemed to genuinely have to think about that one and he used a minute or so to mull over his answer.</p><p>“I don’t know whether they’re dreams as such,” he shrugged, “they’re more our deepest wishes and desires that can no longer be pushed away. When we’re in the trance, we think not of problems that fill our days, and that’s how they manage to slip into the open.”</p><p>Looking back, he didn’t quite know what compelled him to ask or even where he got his courage from.</p><p>“Do you have hidden desires?”</p><p>Harry stared at him for a bit, and Louis looked right back. If he didn’t kid himself, he thought his husband’s eyes looked darker than usual. And he could have sworn that, just before he answered, his eyes had darted down to Louis’ lips.</p><p>Maybe it was more wishful thinking than reality.</p><p>“Everyone does, dear husband,” Harry said, his voice sounding easy, even if his smile looked a bit strained. Louis flushed at that, he shouldn’t have asked the question. It was improper, even if they were married and far from any gossipers of the court. “Do you have any?”</p><p>Louis shrugged. “I can’t induce a trance myself, how would I know?”</p><p>Harry seemed to be more at ease, his smile widening a bit. “The trance doesn't show us desires we don’t know are already there. Deep inside. They merely bring them out into the open for us to no longer deny.”</p><p>Louis didn’t answer, merely started busying himself with something as inconsequential as watching whether the water had started boiling. This conversation seemed to evolve in a direction he should have <i>expected</i> but didn’t know how to prepare himself for, and he had no one but himself to blame for he was the one to have brought it up.</p><p>“Come on, Louis,” Harry goaded with laughter in his voice, and Louis thought that was such a happy sound he wouldn’t mind listening to it forever, “won’t you tell me what you want?”</p><p>“Why?”, he asked simply, trying to deflect, a poor attempt but an attempt nonetheless.</p><p>“I’m your husband,” Harry said, putting emphasis on ‘husband’, “anything you wish for, anything you’re lacking, I can give to you. What good is there in being a lord if I cannot gift my husband what he needs?”</p><p>Louis looked at him curiously. Harry hadn’t ever spoken of him being his husband like that. Like it <i>meant</i> something beyond the obvious practicality of their arrangement.</p><p>He quite liked to be called Harry’s husband in a way that didn’t make it sound as empty a title as the one he’d been bestown as viscount.</p><p>“It’s nothing your titles nor your wealth can give you to me, my lord,” he said primly, eyes still fastened upon the water in the pot. Air bubbles had appeared, maybe it’d soon boil. Having tea in his hands would make this conversation so much smoother he thought.</p><p>“But I <i>can</i> give it to you?”</p><p>Louis ignored him.</p><p>“Louis,” his husband was a child, he was <i>whining</i>, “what do you want?”</p><p><i>You</i>.</p><p>The answer resounded deep within him, so simple and yet so deep and big that he almost shocked himself. He wanted Harry, plain and simple. For his own. Truly his own. Not just a sham marriage to unite two species caught in decades of war.</p><p>It was so simple and yet so complicated.</p><p>A word of three letters and yet, and yet he couldn’t get it past his lips.</p><p>“If I asked you,” he said instead, “if I could go home, would you allow it?”</p><p>He looked over to where Harry was sitting when he didn’t answer and felt instantly terrible. All merriment had been wiped from his face, and he looked deeply troubled.</p><p>“It’d be a process, one where I would need my title, to convince the council that you don’t intend to bring the peace in danger,” he wetted his lips, closing his eyes and wiping his face. He sighed deeply. “But yes, Louis, of course you would be allowed to go home.”</p><p>Louis felt as if a carpet had been dragged from underneath him. He didn’t know what to say or ask, so he said the only thing he possibly could say. The only question left lingering in his mind.</p><p>“Why did you choose me?”, he asked hoarsely, “you could have had land, wealth, anything your people had ever desired from us. Why me?”</p><p>Harry took a deep breath, almost like he was bracing himself to go into battle. His eyes were a deep green and filled to the brim with so many emotions Louis couldn’t tell them apart when they finally locked eyes.</p><p>“It wasn’t something I’d planned, my advisors had already laid out all the different ways we could have exploited your situation for our own good. Put you in a position where we could keep you downtrodden,” and it hurt to hear him say that, “but when I saw you I couldn’t go through with those plans.”</p><p>“Why not?” Louis asked, no <i>begged</i> him.</p><p>“It started years ago, so long ago I can barely remember when,” Harry said, eyes going a bit unfocused as if he was trying to remember or simply lost within the memories of ‘long ago’, “it was during one of the amnistices that had been negotiated over the years. The council didn’t trust that you actually wanted the peace, so they sent a squad of spies, purely to keep an eye on you werewolves. But when we arrived and watched you all, you were all so carefree. You wouldn’t know we were still at war, technically, looking at you all. You were so happy.”</p><p>Louis felt like he could scarcely breathe.</p><p>“And then I saw <i>you</i>,” Harry continued, and a smile appeared on his face, and it eased the tension in Louis’ chest, “and you were so bright, helping your siblings, your mother. Teaching the kids how to shift and use their wolves to hunt. Not to fight in a war, not to sniff out the enemy; to live. You were all trying your best to live.”</p><p>Harry’s eyes looked wet, and Louis could feel tears pressing as well. God, he missed home. e could see the scene Harry was painting as if it was yesterday - not because he could remember that specific day, but because that was what he had fought for. His family, his pack - so that children grew up without having to weaponize their wolves. That they never knew what it felt like to take a life, to see someone die; to feel someone die through the bond.</p><p>“And I thought about what we were doing there, by your village,” Harry said, voice pained, “you were living, trying to move on, and we still wouldn’t give up. There was peace and we didn’t leave you alone. When I saw you by your mum’s side that day, I thought about that day. That we would never actually get peace if we continued to fight you, if not with weapons then intimidation. And I-”</p><p>Harry stumbled over his words, and he looked so lost within himself, that Louis couldn’t stop himself from going to him. To take his hand in his and show his support.</p><p>“I wanted peace so badly, I wanted new generations to never know war and death on that scale,” Harry whispered, looking into Louis’ eyes, “if you were there to show us that we could find a better way, one that didn’t require or demand any more sacrifices, not lives nor wealth. And-” he laughed, and Louis squeezed his hand in his, “you were so lovely that day, and you’ve seen where we live. It’s so cold, though I love it dearly, and I allowed myself to be selfish. It was wrong, but I just wanted you near, Louis, please forgive me.”</p><p>Louis shushed him, continued to hold onto Harry’s hand - it felt almost like an anchor amidst his swirling thoughts that he couldn’t quite get a grasp on.</p><p>He wetted his lips. “It wasn’t right, I won’t tell you that, I would have liked a choice-”</p><p>Harry looked like he’d struck him and he nods miserably.</p><p>“But,” Louis said firmly, hand squeezing Harry’s, “but we were at war, I understand politics. Political marriages have been made on worse grounds, and I think your reasons are lovelier than most reasons I’ve heard before.”</p><p>Harry didn’t immediately smile back when Louis gave him a small one.</p><p>“And for what it’s worth,” Louis added, “I think, in a world where we had been given the time, I would have liked to marry you regardless.”</p><p>“Would you really?”, Harry’s voice was not more than a whisper, but he sounded so hopeful Louis couldn’t stop from smiling.</p><p>Louis nodded, forcing himself to be brave and naked.</p><p>Nothing was more frightening, he thought, than to bare yourself and your feelings, offer yourself up for judgement.</p><p>“And I think we’re owed,” Louis mused, “to give ourselves that time now. Don’t you?”</p><p>“I do,” Harry breathed.</p><p>They looked at each other in a comfortable silence for a while, fire crackling in the background, birds chirping in the sky. Louis felt at peace here, never wanted to leave, never wanted to go back to the stone and the cold. He just wanted to stay out here with Harry.</p><p>“Louis,” Harry said after a bit, “won’t you tell me what you want?”</p><p>Looking into Harry’s eyes, having his hand warm in his own, Louis had never felt more brave.</p><p>“You,” he whispered.</p><p>Harry’s smile was a beautiful sight to behold, and Louis wished that he could freeze the world right here, right now, so he could look upon it forever.</p><p>Harry leaned in to press a kiss to Louis’ forehead, his hand coming up to cup the back of Louis’ head. When he leaned back, his hand moved from his hair, slowly, to rest on his cheek.</p><p>“That I can give you, exactly as I am, no titles nor wealth,” Harry accepted, “but first we’ll have to build trust, first we’ll have to know each other. In time, and we have all the time we want.”</p><p>Above them, a bird flew from the branch on which it was perched. Louis looked up in time to see it fly towards the sun and open sky.</p><p>“I want to grow old.”</p><p>Harry blinked, the hand on Louis’ cheek stilling for a split second. “You want to grow old?”</p><p>Louis nodded, Harry’s hand moving with his head movement.</p><p>“Yes, it’s what I’ve always planned. I want to grow old, some day,” he bit his lip, “I don’t want to be immortal forever, I want to change the world, and then <i>I</i> want to change with it.”</p><p>Harry smiled a bit at that. “That’s a beautiful dream, Louis. I wish I could share in it.”</p><p>He looked immeasurably sad, and Louis quickened to get to the most important part. The part that would maybe make Harry see that he was serious, that he wanted to be just as vulnerable as Harry, that he wasn’t afraid of Harry seeing him without his defences up.</p><p>For Harry, he wanted to be defenceless. For just a little while.</p><p>“It is,” he agreed, “but right now, right now when I look into the future, all I can think about is how it involves us. What the future holds for us. And I think, with time, that <i>our</i> future could be my new dream.”</p><p>Harry let out a wet laugh and Louis leaned closer to him, hand grasping Harry’s tightly.</p><p>“That’d be an honour, Louis.”</p><p>Louis looked back over his shoulder. “For now, though, what do you say to a cup of tea?”</p><p>They’re not children, but even so, he thought, they’re allowed to fumble and stumble. The world could let them have this in peace, he decided.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>***</b>
  </p>
</div>The full moon rose, finally, the next night. The relief of watching the moon be uncovered by the clouds, feeling the power thrum through his systems, senses sharpened, feeling at home in the forest. Sensing Harry by his side, not warm nor cold, but there and strong. He didn’t remember a time where he felt this at ease.<p>“You said my name once,” Harry whispered, breaking the silence, “and it sounded so nice on your lips. Would you mind terribly to say it again? Before you turn?”</p><p>“Just your name?”</p><p>Harry nodded.</p><p>“Just my name.”</p><p>“Harry.”</p><p>Said vampire smiled so gently, Louis could feel butterflies fly around in his stomach. And just before he transformed, Harry leant in and pressed a sweet, warm kiss to his cheek.</p><p>When Louis regained his balance as a wolf, he wondered whether or not wolves could blush. It was never a thought that’d crossed his mind before, but now that it was vitally important he didn’t, he needed to be sure.</p><p>He steadied himself, readying himself to leap, to run - underneath the stars, underneath the moon, watching Harry in the periphery of his eye. He turned back to him,  walked over to him, and waited till Harry bowed down a bit to press another kiss to his head.</p><p>When Harry also sneaked in a kiss on his snout, Louis jumped back, pressing his nose against his legs, the ground, to stop himself from sneezing. When the need abate, he scowled in his husband’s direction. He just looked absolutely delighted with himself.</p><p>He bade Harry farewell with a bow of his head, immediately turned to run, unable to deny his wolf and himself the need any longer.</p><p>Running felt like he was running home, and had he been human, his smile would like have been brighter than the sun.</p><p>When he turned his head, sensing someone or something there, and found Harry, a warm feeling settled within him.</p><p>Running with Harry by his side felt like he already was home.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>***</b>
  </p>
</div>“We could stay here forever,” Harry whispered in the morning against Louis’ furry shoulder, where he rested his head. “Had I not sworn oaths to protect my people, I would stay here with you forever. Undisturbed, we could have the peace and quiet we deserve.”<p>Louis didn’t, couldn’t, do anything but lick his face to dissuade him from entertaining those fantasies. As much as he wanted to do exactly that, leave everything behind for someone else to govern and make peace, they both knew they had their duties - to their respective people, but also to the dream they shared. Of a peace between the two people that could not be broken. A naive dream that was too perhaps, but he knew they would both do their damned best to fulfill it.</p><p>Harry laughed. “No, you’re right, we can’t not go back, though the thought is tempting.”</p><p>Not for the first time, Louis wished that he could freeze the world, time itself, so they would never have to move.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>***</b>
  </p>
</div>In the end, Harry’s people come to get them, Louis didn’t like to think of whether they found them quickly or worse if they’d not dropped the paranoid ways of the past, and had had someone follow them from day one. It made sense, in a sad and infuriating way, because Harry was the vampire lord, and Louis was a werewolf, at the end of the day.<p>They might have to leave the forest, the quiet, the freedom, but they won’t be going back to how they were. Louis knew this already, but the hand Harry wrapped firmly around his helped a warm feeling settle inside him. And when Harry was determined that they’d walk home so that Louis could spend as much time in the forest as possible, the warm feeling feels more like one of their camp fires flaring inside him.</p><p>“Time to go home,” he whispered to Harry as they started walking, and the smile Harry gave him made the fire inside him crackle louder.</p><p>“Home,” Harry mused and pressed another kiss to the top of Louis’ head.</p><p>They’re not in love, not yet, Louis felt this deep in his bones - <i>yet</i>, but they’re settling into being a twosome. A true marriage was founded upon trust and warmth, and even if the trust wasn’t quite there yet, Harry made him feel warmer than anyone and anything had ever made him feel before.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>***</b>
  </p>
</div>He hadn’t really thought about death in a long time, it seemed like. Only fleetingly, as an abstract concept. Nothing that would happen to him for a long time, forever maybe.<p>Ever since they’d struck peace, it was like the thought of death, the idea of death, had disappeared from the forefront of his mind. Slowly had it sunk to the back of his brain, sometimes he’d thought about it. About the war. But not so much these days, if at all.</p><p>He hadn’t really thought about death because he’d been busy living. He’d finally started properly living amongst the undead vampires, ironic as it was.</p><p>His childhood had been filled with war, so had the start of his adulthood. The peace, when it finally came, had been at the expense of the life he could’ve, should’ve, led back home.</p><p>His life hadn’t been ruined by coming here, though it’d been a path he’d never wanted for himself, wouldn’t have chosen it. But it wasn’t all bad, despite what he’d thought those first few weeks before the full moon, and even after.</p><p>Harry was here, the future they talked about would most likely be here. Walking home from where they’d camped out during the full moon had been so much easier than the walk out. It felt like there was a spring in his step, like he would fly away if Harry didn’t hold onto him. And he had. His hand had held him so tightly.</p><p>Apparently, though, just because he had stopped thinking about death, didn’t mean it had stopped existing. He’d just thought it wouldn’t happen to <i>him</i> anymore.</p><p>Which was why, probably, he didn’t comprehend it at first. Didn’t understand why Harry was frantically yelling at him, almost screaming, looking every inch the opposite of what he was supposed to be. Claimed to be. An undead. A vampire. Unfeeling.</p><p>After the first couple seconds, when he looked down at his stomach, he realised.</p><p>Guess the saying, how did it go again - oh yes, the pain only kicks in when you see the wound.</p><p>The wound seemed to already be infected, seeming green, black, and like it was oozing.</p><p>“Oh,” he whispered, finding it hard to get anything past his lips, even air.</p><p>A hand came to rest on his cheek, and he sluggishly tried to figure out what was happening now. Harry’s face came into focus, and Louis couldn’t help smiling. Harry always made him smile these days, even when he tried to fight it.</p><p>“Lou,” Harry whispered, or shouted, it didn’t really matter, Louis thought. He just liked seeing Harry and hearing his voice, “you have to stay awake. Just stay awake. We’ll help you.”</p><p>He nodded, or attempted to - his head might have just spinned in circles. But he tried, he really did.</p><p>His eyes drifted to the wound again, and oh - there was a dagger. Silver. That explained the oozing. And then his eyes drifted again, to his arms, and his veins were wrong. He squinted at them for a time, the world moving around him without his acknowledgement, while he tried to figure out what was wrong.</p><p>And then it hit him, his veins were green, black, just like the wound.</p><p>He remembered learning about this, once, a long time ago, when they were still at war.</p><p>His lungs wheezed as he breathed, and his vision seemed to tilt, as if he was on a ship. Up, down, up, down, up is down, down is up. The ship was caught in a storm, and he didn’t have an anchor, he didn’t even have a reeling to support him.</p><p>Something important, or bad, or both maybe?, was happening, and he couldn’t quite focus his mind on it.</p><p>He’d been remembering something, something he learned. Black veins, green veins. Pain, pain, pain, <i>death</i>.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Death.</p><p>“Harry,” he whispered, he hoped he got a bit of sound out, what was the point of being married to a vampire if the slightest of his sounds didn’t alert him, honestly-</p><p>Oh, there he was. He smiled at him. He liked Harry.</p><p>“Louis, Louis, what’s happening?”, Harry’s voice sounded frantric. His hand was back at his cheek, and he felt so nice, cool against his warm, warm skin, and where did that come from anyway-</p><p>The fever, right.</p><p>He was having a fever because his body was fighting what the dagger was laced in. And the dagger was laced in, the dagger was laced in-</p><p>His thought process, sluggish and erratic as it already was, by a coughing fit, or maybe it was his body spasming, whatever it was, his head had to be turned so he didn’t choke on his own blood. Pain shot through his entire body as the dagger was jostled where it was embedded in his body-</p><p>“Harry,” he whispered again, “Harry, Haz, the dagger-”</p><p>It probably wasn’t words that came out, hence why Harry was trying to sush him, but this important. He felt like screaming, his mind didn’t cooperate, he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t breathe. He closed his eyes, pressing them shut in frustration, trying to fight of the pain for a bit, so he could think straight, for just a second.</p><p>The dagger was laced in-</p><p>“Wolfsbane,” he whispered, and Harry came right back into focus, eyes on the verge of feral.</p><p>“What did you say?”, he urged him, “Lou, what did you say?”</p><p>Finally having gotten a grasp of the word, of the sounds, he said it again. “Wolfsbane.”</p><p>He didn’t think Harry could be paler than he was normally. He was wrong on that account too. Huh.</p><p>Then someone did something to the blade in his stomach, and he blacked out.</p><p>Shame, he thought while the world dimmed, he’d have liked to kiss Harry. Some day.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>***</b>
  </p>
</div>He woke up multiple times where the world was still too dark, the pain was still too great, and all he could hear was fragments of conversation.<p>At first he thought he’d died, but he couldn’t hear the howls of wolves past he knew awaited him. Wolves, when they passed, were going to the planes, to run forever amongst their pack from ages long forgotten.</p><p>So, he had to be alive somehow.</p><p>Which meant he would still get to kiss Harry. This was the thought he stumbled across the fourth, or so he thought, time he woke up. The thought would have made him smile if he could.</p><p>Then he sank back into the darkness.</p><p>He was dreaming, he thought, the next time he was somewhat aware. Firstly, he could see. He didn’t remember opening his eyes. Second, Harry was standing in front of him in his mother’s house. A house he probably would never see again. Out of the window he could see the green leaves on the beeches. They were only that green in spring, or early summer. It was still winter.</p><p>It had to be a dream.</p><p>He almost didn’t want it to be a dream because Harry was smiling at him like he was the sun itself, his eyes sparkling in a way he’d never thought a vampire’s eyes could.</p><p>But then again, as he remembered, Harry’s eyes had sparkled somewhat similarly when he’d been around his mum and sister. And their eyes had sparkled back.</p><p>Love.</p><p>The day Harry would look at him with love, he thought, was the day pigs would fly.</p><p>He let the image go just as Harry was reaching out towards him, let him fall back into the darkness that enveloped him as easily as water.</p><p>The next time he awoke, it felt like coming up for air.</p><p>He could open his eyes.</p><p>The relief of being able to see, not just the room he was in, but the light, everything, most importantly Harry.</p><p>Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry, his heart seemed to sing. Delighting at the sight of him.</p><p>“Harry,” he croaked, and the other made a startled movement he’d never thought a vampire could make.</p><p>When he turned to Louis, Louis almost gasped. His husband looked terrible, eyes red rimmed, dark circles under his eyes, somehow looking more haunted and vulnerable than the moment just before he passed out.</p><p>Louis raised his hand to Harry’s cheek, albeit very shakingly and weakly, he almost wasn’t able to do it, but Harry caught his hand in his before it could fall. Harry’s grip on his hand was tight, almost to the point of cutting off circulation, but the way he brought it up to his cheek was tender, and Louis couldn’t help but smile.</p><p>“Missed me?”, he asked, a smile softening the words.</p><p>Harry let out a breathless laugh. “Fuck, Louis, I was so worried.”</p><p>Louis just closed his eyes, relishing in Harry’s hand around his, in the thumb caressing the back of his hand. It felt nice, and the morning sunlight warming him as well. </p><p>It almost felt like the brief dream he’d had.</p><p>“Yeah, I missed you,” Harry said after a bit, and Louis cracked open an eye.</p><p>His smile hadn’t left his face. Had he been less tired, that statement would have made his smile grow.</p><p>Harry looked down, almost shily. “Don’t let it go to your head.”</p><p>Louis laughed and shook his head weakly. “I would never.”</p><p>Harry’s grip on his hand tightened out of nowhere, almost like Harry was gearing up for something. Louis just lied down, staring at him, taking in his features, his eyes. Everything about him.</p><p>“Do you remember what happened?”</p><p>Louis nodded tightly as he remembered the pain, the deliriousness, trying to think and every other escaping him. His desperate attempts to tell Harry what was wrong.</p><p>Wolfsbane.</p><p>Silver dagger.</p><p>“It was a vampire whose family had been killed in the war, a long time ago really, but,” Harry seemed to age fifty years during the seconds he spoke, “pain like that never really goes away.”</p><p>Louis nodded his agreement. It had been a long time since anyone in his pack had gotten killed due to Harry’s strategy in the last years of the war, but he still remembered feeling hollow after someone was ripped away from him.</p><p>You weren’t the same afterwards. There was a hole inside you that couldn’t necessarily be filled again.</p><p>“Time,” Louis started, and Harry looked at him, eyes soft, despite the harsh lines on his face. “time doesn’t heal everything.”</p><p>Harry shook his head, slowly, like the movement took as much power as it did Louis. As if he was weighed down by a ton on each shoulder.</p><p>“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed, then moved the hands down to lie on Louis’ duvet, Harry’s other hand coming to grip around Louis’ one, “but your wound time will heal, though the scar will always be there to remind you. I’m so sorry for what happened.”</p><p>Louis shook his head. “You didn’t order it, pain turns even the best of us mad.”</p><p>Harry smiled sadly. “Yes, it does.”</p><p>There wasn’t anything else said for a while, and Louis wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. His chest still felt a bit tight, but the calm of just being with Harry was worth it. He didn’t want to go back to sleep, even if their conversation wasn’t going to continue.</p><p>Harry still fidgeted a bit from where he sat.</p><p>Louis looked at him with a confused glance. “Are you okay?”</p><p>Now that he’d said it, all different thoughts and worries came to focus. Maybe Harry had been hurt as well. Maybe they’d wanted him dethroned in protest. Maybe he’d been somehow seen as a traitor-</p><p>“I’m fine,” Harry said with a thick voice, “that’s the problem, Louis,” his voice sounded haggard, like it was torn from the deepest place within him, like every word hurt to speak, “that’s the <i>problem</i>, Louis, I’m fine, and you’re not.”</p><p>Louis’ brain was still sluggish, and the pain was still present, and all he wanted to keep Harry’s hands around his own. With a struggle, he lifted his other hand in the direction of their joined hands. Harry immediately shot out with one of his hands to grab Louis’.</p><p>He held both his hands in a tight grip, as if Louis kept him anchored.</p><p>“I’m near invincible, Louis, and I still couldn’t protect you.” Louis wondered how he ever could have thought of Harry as dead. He’d never seen anyone show so much conflicting emotion, “and I’m so happy you’re alive, that you’re going to be fine, but it just shows I can’t protect you.”</p><p>A little bell rang in Louis’ head, a little alarm. If he’d been a little more awake, this is where he’d start to reassure Harry that he’d wanted to explore their marriage as a real marriage. That he'd meant, truly from the bottom of his heart, what he'd said in the woods.</p><p>“You were brought here under the guise of peace negotiations,” Harry sighed, “and instead I wrangled you into a political game you never should have been a part of. I’m sorry. When you’re well enough, you’ll be escorted back to your own lands.”</p><p>And that- Louis hadn’t expected that. He’d expected Harry wanting to distance himself a bit, he'd shown to have a bit of survivor's guilt; he’d expected having to coax Harry into believing that he really was fine. He hadn't expected Harry to <i>give up</i>.</p><p>Louis tried to get his brain to work properly, trying and failing to grasp what he wanted to say. The failure mostly lied in him having way too much to say, most of it incredibly rude.</p><p>How dared Harry-</p><p>“You’re free to go, Louis,” Harry repeated, still not turning towards him. “You always should have been, I’m sorry. You can go home, indefinitely.”</p><p>Then he spirited off, leaving nothing behind but a little click as the door swung shut.</p><p>Louis wanted to fight him, scream at him, that he didn’t have the right to act like this. Louis was the one with a hole in his stomach that was still healing. Louis had been the one wronged again and again. Harry didn’t get to play the victim, just because he was feeling bad. He didn’t get to wallow in whatever self-pity he was currently wallowing in.</p><p>“Come back, you asshole,” he yelled out, voice hoarse, and he let himself fall back into the pillows, feeling like screaming until he had no voice.</p><p>He knew Harry could hear him when he yelled. Even if he hadn’t become as attuned to him as he knew he had, he’d yelled loudly enough that anyone in the main house would be able to hear him.</p><p>“You’re not letting me go home because it’s the right thing to do,” he screamed, “you’re doing it because you're being a coward.”</p><p>He deflated, feeling exhausted, bone-weary. His eyes glued to the ceiling, he let himself cry. For the pain he was feeling in his side, for the pain he was feeling in his heart.</p><p>Selfish prick. Selfish fucking prick. Selfish fucking prick who thought he was doing the right thing.</p><p>That vampire could just wait, when Louis got his hands on him again- well, what would he do? Punch him as he wanted to right now, or hug him and beg him to never let go?</p><p>He supposed he’d only find that out if said asshole vampire actually bothered to reappear.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>***</b>
  </p>
</div>The next time he saw Harry was when he came with the doctor to have him properly examined before letting him out of the hospital bed he’d been lying in for the past week.<p>Louis had a mind to ask the doctor whether it’d put him too far back to punch Harry hard, or if he’d even recommend it.</p><p>“Lou,” Harry greeted him, Louis glowered at him, “you’re looking better.”</p><p>He refused to answer him and when the doctor stepped through the door, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else - which Louis could relate to, he decided to stop acknowledging him too.</p><p>“My lord,” the doctor greeted Harry, and then greeted Louis with a smile, “my lord viscount, how are you feeling today, sir?”</p><p>The doctor had been the first vampire outside of the servants coming to his room, who had ever used that title. Others in the manor used the honorific ‘sir’, they just never addressed him by his title. Not that he’d minded that, he understood. Using a protected and important title for someone who’d been your deadly enemy just a few months ago, that wasn’t something you got used to quickly. If he’d been told to call an enemy, a vampire, Pack Beta he’d simply refused. To acknowledge an enemy as the second highest ranking within your group, that was against all nature.</p><p>Still, he appreciated it.</p><p>“Your husband says that you’ve been recovering remarkably fast,” the doctor sounded very pleased and relieved, and all Louis could do was wonder how the fuck Harry would know that. “So, I’ll just be performing the last few examinations, to see if you can be allowed to not be under our supervision.”</p><p>Louis nodded numbly, listened to all the information his doctor gave him during the examination. That his abdomen had suffered quite a trauma and some of his organs wouldn’t be able to perform at their maximum for a few weeks, despite his werewolf healing. That if he wanted to travel home to his homelands, he’d have to wait at least another month. So as to be sure that nothing would go wrong, become infected, or in any way cause him discomfort apart from soreness. The doctor gave him tonics and creams, told him he’d probably be left with a scar but the cream should help his skin not to create too much scar tissue that would hurt him when he transformed or just performed daily activities. He told him that he'd always bear the scar, the poison of the wolfsbane had been too powerful and had went unrinsed too long to heal completely, but he would make a full recovery.</p><p>Halfway through the examinations, he zoned out though. He’d had small scars, from training, but he’d looked down when a nurse had been changing the bandages. The poison from the wolfsbane had been eating at his flesh until they could get it under control, it seemed as if its effects had accelerated so the vampire who had attacked him must have had an enormous batch and used it all on that one dagger. So much anger had lain in that one action. Louis wondered whether or not he wouldn't have done the same, had he gone through what the vampire had.</p><p>“Harry,” he said, the second the doctor had bowed and bid him farewell.</p><p>His husband, if he even was that still - if Harry hadn't gone and had an annulment drawn up already, seemed startled at being acknowledged, if the little jump in the corner of his eye was anything to go by.</p><p>Harry didn’t actually say anything back to him, probably another step in his ridiculous plan of cutting himself off from Louis in an attempt to give him his freedom back.</p><p>“What happened to the vampire that attacked me?”</p><p>Silence reigned for a few minutes, and just as Louis was about to cave in and look over at Harry, the other spoke up. His voice sounded strained, like he was talking out from behind gritted teeth.</p><p>“He won’t bother you again,” he sounded sure, and Louis wondered what punishments could be bestowed vampires that would be equal to cutting off a werewolf from its true form, from nature.</p><p>He shuddered a bit at the thought.</p><p>“Are you cold?”, Harry sounded concerned, and Louis immediately shook his head.</p><p>“No, I’m not cold.”</p><p>Again, silence fell over them, and he knew that if he didn’t say anything, Harry would walk out that door and do his utmost best to not cross paths with Louis again. He’d remove himself from the situation and probably only go back to his schedule when Louis left.</p><p>He could warn him. Say that if he left, he’d never forgive him.</p><p>Harry would probably just see that as a win. It made his plan to protect Louis, or whatever, go much smoother if Louis hated Harry and wanted away as soon as possible. Hell, he’d probably leave just for that, even if he hadn’t planned on it.</p><p>“Please, Harry,” he said instead, looking at him for the first time, “don’t shut me out.”</p><p>“You got <i>hurt</i>, Louis,” Harry reminded him, again through gritted teeth. “and I had to watch you almost die. I had to almost feel you die, Louis-”</p><p>He cut himself off, and Louis’ heart broke a bit looking at him. This was the lord of the vampires, this was the war lord that single handedly won the war for his people, and he looked destroyed.</p><p>“Harry,” he whispered, stretching his arm out towards him, “Harry, please.”</p><p>He couldn’t remember a time when he had actually begged. He’d been ready to do it a few times, had been ready to do whatever was necessary. But he’d never needed to in the end.</p><p>This time, though, this time he needed to. This time Harry wasn’t the strong one, and Louis wasn’t either, he just knew that he had to be a little stronger than Harry.</p><p>“We knew peace wouldn’t right all the wrongs that have been done before,” Louis tried to remind him, “we fought, and we made peace. But people have suffered, for years, their anger and pain won’t go away like that.”</p><p>Harry nodded. “I know that.”</p><p>“We’ll have to do better,” he said, pushing himself upright, making Harry scowl at him. He maybe hadn’t hid his wincing well enough then. “We’ll have to show a united front, peace doesn’t come by just with words.”</p><p>Harry studied him, his arms crossed.</p><p>“Our marriage created peace,” Louis continued, “now we can make it <i>last</i>. That was our dream, remember? Don’t let him take that from us.”</p><p>Harry smiled, though his eyes were still suspiciously wet, and he came to sit beside Louis. He took the hand Louis had reached, squeezing it, and bringing it up to his lips.</p><p>“War was easy,” Louis whispered, “this will be harder. But-”</p><p>“We’ll do it together,” Harry reassured him, “I won’t run away. I won’t make you feel weak. We’ll create a new world, a better world, for everyone, together.”</p><p>Louis smiled. </p><p>It’d been easier to be at war than it was to create peace, a peace that will last. A peace that won’t be broken due to grief, revenge, justice; everyone had suffered these past hundred years. People had died, children left orphaned, towns razed. There was so much hurt still, the vampire that had attempted to kill Louis was no outlier; he had fought, he had lost, as had so many others. The grieving deserved justice, and they’d had to find a way to deliver that to them in a way that wasn’t blood revenge. This war had left nothing but victims behind, and though the dead couldn’t be resurrected, all wounds couldn’t be healed, there was still something left to salvage. The materialistic could be redone, towns could be rebuilt, but more importantly, love could be found again.</p><p>It was an unsure road they’d walk, but as long as he wasn’t required to walk it alone, Louis wasn’t scared.</p><p>“Together.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sequel in the making! </p><p>Tthank you all so much for all the love on this story, every comment and kudos are just brightening my days :')</p></blockquote></div></div>
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